


And I'll Give Mine to You

by everandanon



Series: Issues [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bets, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Castiel Acts Like Endverse Castiel (Supernatural), Childhood Friends, Fake Relationship, Flashbacks, Happy Ending, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Minor Castiel/Other(s), Minor Dean Winchester/Other(s), Misunderstandings, POV Dean Winchester, Pansexual Castiel, Pining, Recreational Drug Use, Sharing a Bed, couples therapy, past overdose, references to alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:35:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 47,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22167970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everandanon/pseuds/everandanon
Summary: (Issuesfrom Dean's POV)Cas has been Dean's best friend for over fifteen years, and although things between them aren't as good as they could be - and haven't been for a long time - Dean's not ready to let go of that.Of course, after one of their dumb fights gets out of hand and they wind up committing to six months of fake dating and couples therapy to prove a stupid point-He might not get a choice.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Issues [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1591348
Comments: 38
Kudos: 98





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **This is not the sequel. This is Issues from Dean's POV. If you want the sequel, please see The Worst In Me.**
> 
> Title taken from _Issues_ , by Julia Michaels.
> 
> (Also, I continue to not be a therapist or educated in psychology, so this is not going to be an accurate depiction.)
> 
> Someone super awesome expressed an interest in this, so here this is for anyone who might want to read/skim it for Dean's POV. I warn you, though, that the story is basically identical to Issues; it has a few scenes not present in the Cas version, but it also is missing some that version had (due to the nature of how Cas thinks about things and how Dean mostly tries not to). So you'd effectively be reading the same story twice, which is boring, but if you had particular questions about what was going on in Dean's head in a certain scene, the answer may be in here! (It may also be in The Worst In Me, though.)
> 
> Also, disclaimer, I wasn't very happy with this version, for many reasons, and I do think it's a bit clumsy, so . . . fair warning. 
> 
> Thank you! ♡

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning: recreational drug use (marijuana), referenced past Cas/Meg, discussions of loss of virginity, past well-meaning but inappropriate pressure to lose said virginity (I have no idea how to tag for that, sorry, details in the end notes), past Cas/OMC (details in the end notes).
> 
> A quick note: Dean, Cas, and Charlie talk about 'settling down,' citing their age (they're only 27). While they may be feeling some increased pressure/awareness, they shouldn't be; this is not meant to promote any harmful ideas about what people should do or when they should do it.

“Really, Dean?”

Dean looks at Cas, kneeling by a box on the kitchen floor, scowling at something in his hand. He shrugs, not very interested in what it is or what Cas’s opinions on it may be.

“How many bottle openers do you _need_?” Cas continues. “I’ve never even seen you use anything but that stupid ring.”

“’Least I open bottles myself,” he mutters, pointedly not looking back at Cas as he focuses on unpacking his own kitchen box.

The rustle of packing paper ceases behind him, and he rolls his eyes preemptively.

“Sorry?”

“You know. ‘Cause you always get somebody else to do it for you. Just, bat your eyes at whatever sucker’s closest and bam, drink fetched, paid for, and delivered.”

Cas snorts, which is rich, because Dean’s witnessed it too many times, Cas making dark bedroom eyes at some fool until they’re tripping over themselves to have the privilege of serving him a drink and watching him put it up to his lips.

He savagely tears through tape and paper to unwrap a soup bowl.

“ _Hardly,_ Dean. I admit, it is in the spirit of my parties to . . . assist one another — but I open plenty of my own bottles.”

“And other people’s,” Dean mumbles, because he’s seen that little ritual, too, but fortunately, Cas doesn’t hear him over the sound of paper.

Honestly, Dean’s still not sure how it came to this; if someone had told him a month ago that he’d be moving in with his childhood best friend, he’d have laughed in their face. If they’d added that he’d then be pretending to be in a relationship with the dude for the next six months, he’d have hurled himself off the nearest bridge.

But he _is_ moving in with Cas, and they _are_ — they’re gonna do this, this fake thing, for real.

And if the next six months are anything like today has been, Dean’s going to need to revisit that bridge idea.

“Is this — _really,_ Dean? A _dozen_ light up shot glasses? How old are you?”

Dean grits his teeth.

“Christ, Cas, does it matter? My shit is my shit, it’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Mm, and you know, you’d be right — except you’re forgetting that _I_ will be having to trip over and sort through your ‘shit’ every time I want to actually use something.”

Dean chuckles, unamused.

“You know, Cas, I thought you’d make a shitty boyfriend because of all the sleeping around, but apparently it’s because you’ll fuckin’ _nag_ somebody to death. Good to know. I thought you stoners were supposed to be like, chill.”

There’s silence from behind him, and Dean feels something a little like triumph — straight up until he hears the front door open and slam.

God damn it.

Cas is gonna tell Dr. Barnes, isn’t he?

It wasn’t Dean’s idea, anyway.

And sure, it wasn’t Cas’s either — they have _Charlie_ to thank for this shitshow — but part of Dean feels like this is definitely Cas’s _fault._

Because Cas is Cas, and even before the drugs and the booze and the neverending string of whatever-you-call-’em parading through his house (often in groups) — even when he was a dorky little guy in a too-big trenchcoat who’d rather study than party and looked for no further entertainment than following Dean around and staring at the side of his head — he was the most stubborn sonofabitch Dean had ever known. And Dean’s a _Winchester._ He fucking knows about stubborn. And the only worse thing to be than stubborn is the other thing Cas happens to be and has always been, which is _contrary._

And maybe nobody else realized it, way back when they were kids, but Dean knew. Dean saw. For all of Cas's quietness, for all that he shied away from confrontation and conflict, for all the crap he went through and put up with, never once complaining — Cas _enjoyed_ fucking things up. He enjoyed throwing a wrench in plans, cocking his head and delivering some innocent, guileless remark like it wouldn’t have a catastrophic domino effect; or worse, going along very agreeably right up until he made his move and you realized he did not actually agree at all and whatever you thought you had on lock turned into a total fucking disaster while Cas’s thousand-yard-stare bored into you from the sidelines, his silent observation a great big ‘fuck you’ to anyone not too busy doing damage control to notice it.

So, yeah. Dean knows better than to get into it with Cas. Which doesn’t actually stop him, sure, because they snipe at each other over nothing every time they’re in the same room, nowadays, but usually one of them storms off before it goes too far.

The truth is, Dean’s stubborn and contrary, too. If one of them _didn’t_ storm off, it would escalate. And then it would keep escalating, on and on until the situation exploded and they crossed a line they couldn’t come back from.

And this thing they’re doing here? Yeah, that’s the line. They got into it, like they do, but this time nobody walked away. Nope, instead they sprinted right across that stupid line, and then turned around and set the damn thing on fire, just in case it wasn’t clear they thought the line could go fuck itself.

Which, again — Cas’s fault. Dean hadn’t even been paying attention to the fucker, graciously keeping to the loveseat while Cas sprawled on the sofa, and addressing Charlie where she’d flopped on the giant beanbag. Everybody else had already left, and Dean was six beers deep in halfhearted contemplation, which led to him idly wondering aloud:

“Maybe I should settle down.”

Charlie had given him a curious look.

“Who’s the girl? Or is it a dude this time?”

Dean gave her an offended look, although she wasn’t wrong; the two times Dean had ever suggested he might do so, it had been prompted by a developing relationship with a girl he _really_ liked.

“There’s no girl. Or dude. I just — maybe I should, you know, find one. Try the . . . apple-pie thing.”

Charlie shrugged.

“Well, I can’t say I haven’t considered it. We are at that age.”

And then, to the surprise of both of them, Cas nodded along.

“That’s true. Maybe we should be thinking about it.”

Introspection abandoned at the significance of that ‘we,’ Dean sat up and stared at him, disbelieving.

“ _You_ ? You think — _you_ should settle down?”

“That’s what I said?”

Dean couldn’t help but laugh.

“Seriously? What would that even look like, man? ‘Cas, could you pick up the kids from practice tonight?’” Dean pitched his voice low. “’Sorry, honey, I would, but you know I always have an orgy on Tuesdays.’”

Charlie giggled, but Cas had lurched into an upright position, eyes narrowed.

“Excuse me? You think — what, I can’t be monogamous?”

“Uh, yeah, because you can’t? You never have been. Dude, even if you could, you’d hate it. Face it, buddy, you’re not cut out for relationships.”

This undeniable insight earned him a humorless laugh.

“That’s rich, coming from _you._ ”

“Huh?” Dean furrowed his brow. “Um, maybe you missed it ‘cause you were in a drug haze or whatever, but I’ve actually had several relationships, and I definitely never cheated.”

“Right. What you do instead is way less honest.”

The _fuck_? Dean wondered.

“The _fuck_?” he said aloud. Cas shook his head, mouth somewhere between a smirk and a grimace.

“No, when things get too serious, you just pull back and create an excuse for one of you to end things.”

“I don’t -”

“If I _did_ do relationships, Dean, I would do them a hell of a lot better than you.”

“Sure, sure, Cas — except for where you can’t actually keep it in your pants.”

“God, you act like you’ve never heard of an open relationship before.”

“Aha! So you admit you can’t!”

“No, that’s not what I said.”

“Because now that you mention it,” Dean continued, ignoring him, “You can’t do the rest of a relationship, either! You’re like a — a fucking cat, Cas; you know _real_ humans need affection and shit, right?”

Cas nodded, glancing away with a huff of laughter.

“Mm. Mhm. And _you_ know, real humans would still rather snuggle a cat than a flesh and blood wall of insecurity and daddy issues.”

Dean leapt to his feet.

“You shut your mouth—”

“ _Guys!_ ” Charlie, still very much there, was glaring at both of them. “Seriously!”

“I’m just saying,” Dean continued stubbornly. “I’d be ten times better at—”

“Until you ruin it on purpose. I, on the other hand, see things through once I commit to them.”

Dean saw red.

“Yeah, Cas? _Prove it._ ”

“I’m not going to lead some random stranger on just to—”

“Knew it,” Dean scoffed. “Coward.”

“Then _you_ prove it, Dean,” he shot back.

“Sure, when I meet someone.”

Cas rolled his eyes.

“Right. _Coward._ ”

“Hey, you said yourself, I can’t just—”

“Date each other.”

There was a long silence, during which Dean tried to understand what he’d just heard, before finally he looked at Charlie. She was surveying them through sharp, narrowed eyes.

“Uh,” he queried, hoping for a reasonable explanation.

“Date each other. Your point’s not about love or whatever, it’s about commitment. So, like — prove you can be devoted partners. Don’t sleep with anyone, cohabit peacefully, go on regular dates, be involved in each other’s crap — you know. Make each other happy. Or at least prove you can not upset each other. I know a couples therapist,” she continued, animation growing, “And you can go see her once a week to check in, have her evaluate you both, and after . . . say, six months? We’ll see who wins.”

They both stared at her, though she was unperturbed; if anything, she looked a touch self-satisfied.

“Uh. But, Charlie, that means we won’t be having sex at all. For six months. That’s not _monogamy,_ that’s — shit, that’s celibacy.”

Cas turned a scathing look on him at that.

“ _That’s_ what got you? Now who can’t keep it in their pants?”

“Hey, I didn’t say I couldn’t, I was just pointing ou—”

“Well, you can have sex with each other!” Charlie cut in cheerfully.

There was another silence, before Cas snorted.

“Like _that’s_ going to happen.”

And that — that was the final straw for Dean, somehow.

“Okay, you know what?” he said. “Let’s do this.”

So yeah. Cas had to spew a bunch of bullshit and pick a fight and cast aspersions on Dean’s honor or whatever, and Dean had had no choice but to pick up the gauntlet.

Fast forward a month, and now here Dean is, unpacking boxes into a two-bedroom apartment he’s going to be stuck sharing with that obstinate dick for the next _half a year,_ except one of those bedrooms is getting turned into storage, because they’re going to _share._ And it’s not even gonna be like the last couple months they lived together, back in college, before Dean lost it and moved out; this time, he can’t just avoid Cas, ignoring him where possible and basically living _around_ him instead of with him.

Nope, they’re gonna have to do dinner, and conversations over breakfast (which sucks, because if Dean is ‘not a morning person,’ then Cas is ‘not actually a person in the mornings’ and nobody in their right mind wants to deal with him before noon), and quality couple time, and date night, and Dean’s going to have to smile and ask questions about shit he doesn’t care about and be appropriately sympathetic at shit he actually finds hilarious and also, he’ll have to let Cas pick what to watch at least half the time.

And then he’ll have to lie down a foot away from him for eight hours and hope Cas doesn’t murder him in his sleep, because the nerdy little dude who used to follow Dean around and tolerate all his antics without much more than the occasional sarcastic remark or bitchy glare? He grew up into somebody who pretty much has zero patience for Dean’s bullshit and is capable of things much, much worse than quietly muttered commentary and angry stares. In fact, Dean’s not even sure how they’re still best friends, but they are. He can’t really picture them being anything else.

But the next six months? They might be the thing that finally changes that.

Dean would be lying if he said he wasn’t worried.

Twenty minutes later, Cas comes back into the kitchen, murmuring a dry ‘hello’ and _reeking_ of pot.

Dean, at least, bites his tongue this time.

“So how would you say you’re settling in?”

Dean and Cas don’t look at each other.

“Uh. Okay. You know, it’s — kinda an adjustment, seeing as how — how it’s sudden. It’s not a normal progression from, um . . .” he trails off.

Dr. Barnes — Pamela, as she invited them to call her — nods in understanding.

“Of course. Your situation is a little bit unusual. Many people actually jump into things too quickly, but their incentive to make it work is usually a little more hormonal, and less — well, competitive.” She smiled. “ _But_ you’d be surprised. A lot of the same rules still apply, and I hope to see you both put forth the effort.”

Cas smirks and opens his mouth, probably to make some clever little comment about Dean and effort, but he shuts it when Dr. Barnes raises her brows at him.

See, they’re both still getting used to the ‘we have to be nice to each other’ thing. And sure, they both really wanna win and make the other person eat their stupid, ridiculous, unjustified words, but god damn do old habits die hard.

Dean basically says as much to Pamela, and she chuckles.

“That dynamic is surprisingly not uncommon in regular couples,” she says. “It’s an easy pattern to fall into, when you know someone well. Now, you told me at our introductory meeting last week that you two consider yourself best friends?”

Dean had said that, half-expecting Cas to argue, but there’d been nothing, so he felt safe nodding along in confirmation now.

“I see. Would you say your relationship has always been this contentious?”

Dean’s not sure how to answer that.

Like, he knows what the answer is. The answer is ‘no,’ because he and Cas used to get along like a house on fire, until things changed what felt like overnight and suddenly they got along like they might _set_ the house on fire.

But that’s not something he’s ever really worked out in his own head, and it feels way too personal to talk about with Cas sitting right there.

Besides, Pamela’s not his personal therapist — for which he's glad — and they’re only here for a very specific reason.

“Uh, pretty much.”

He catches the turn of Cas’s head in his peripheral, can feel him staring at Dean.

“And you, Castiel? Would you agree?”

“No,” he answers promptly, and Dean turns to frown at him. Cas is looking at Pamela, though.

She nods.

“Alright, well, there’s a place to start. Does one of you want to elaborate?”

They’re both silent, and she sighs.

“Okay. Castiel, since you feel like it _wasn’t_ always this way, when would you say things changed?”

Cas hesitates, so Dean interjects.

“Aren’t we here to talk about . . . now?”

Pamela gives him a sharp look.

“That’s true, Dean, but ‘now’ you’re having problems that are related to ‘then,’ so if you want to get back on track in the present, you need to figure out what derailed you in the first place.”

He sighs.

“Okay, fine. Cas, what derailed us?” he asks, unable to keep the mockery out of his tone, and the hesitation in Cas’s face disappears, the whole thing becoming closed off. He slouches where he sits.

“I couldn’t say.”

Which, you know, that’s fucking rich coming from the guy who brought it up in the first place.

“Maybe we can figure it out,” Pamela says encouragingly. “Obviously, if you feel you have some insight into the _why,_ that’s helpful, but I asked _when_ you felt like things changed.”

Cas shrugs.

“Sometime in high school, maybe.”

Dean tenses. Pamela’s right; the _why_ is hard, it’s something Dean doesn’t even wanna think about, but the _when_ is easy. Dean can even do one better than just ‘high school.’

He can tell her the exact night.

Dean had been stoked, because he finally talked Cas into going to a party.

See, Cas pretty much went along with whatever Dean said, in some ways, but only to a certain point. If he really wasn’t interested in what Dean was doing, he’d just — disappear. Dean always wondered if he was that inattentive or if Cas had supernatural powers or something, because one minute, they’d be hanging out, and then something would happen, like a group of people coming up to talk to them, and Dean would turn around to say something to Cas and he’d just be gone.

Of course, if it was just the two of them, he’d usually explain himself with a, “No, thank you, Dean, I think I’ll spend some time in the library,” or whatever, and that’s what he always did when Dean tried to talk him into going out.

And it wasn’t like Dean was trying to do some skeevy peer-pressure thing. Dean liked going out. He knew a lot of cool people, and drinking and dancing and playing dumb games and yeah, hooking up — it was all fun. And Cas was his best friend, even if they were a lot different in some ways, so — he wanted Cas to have fun, too. He was sure if he could just get Cas to _try,_ he’d like it, at least enough to go along with Dean.

Anyway, in April of Senior Year, Dean wheedled and prodded and promised to do all of his own English homework — why Cas ever cared enough to be bribed by such a thing still baffled Dean — and Cas finally relented and agreed to go to Charlie’s 18 th  birthday bash. Dean, as Dean tended to do, drank a decent amount of beer once he got there (but not too much; he had Cas to worry about, after all), and when an empty, spinnable bottle got brought out to many whoops and cheers, and a nervous Cas confessed he’d never kissed anyone (which shocked the hell out of Dean at the time, but in hindsight, _duh_ ) Dean got the brilliant idea in his head to do his buddy one better and get him _laid._

Now, Meg had been eying Cas all night — hell, Meg had been eying Cas the entire year — and as soon as the bottle got brought out and she stared Cas down, licking her lips, Dean knew he had a pretty likely candidate. Cas liked Meg; Dean could tell, because he often laughed at her jokes in class and he didn’t give her that scary, cold look when she slapped him on the back or nudged him.

So — so it was obvious, what needed to be done, right?

Anyway, Cas chickened out when it came time for him to spin the bottle, and despite the jeers and encouraging yells of his peers, he firmly excused himself from the circle. Dean jumped up and went after him.

“Hey, hey, what happened? Thought we were gonna get you kissed.”

Cas shook his head, clearly agitated.

“I don’t — Dean, I don’t want to kiss some random person for a game.”

Yeah, Dean could see how that was awkward. Cas wasn’t great with people he didn’t know, and there was only a small chance that bottle would have landed on Meg.

But you know what, it worked out better this way; Dean had his buddy covered.

“Alright. S’okay, Cas. You just — you wait here, okay? I’m gonna — yeah, just wait here.” He patted Cas’s shoulder and went in search of Meg.

After an exchange of gestures, she left her spot in the circle and sauntered over.

“What’s up, prettyboy?”

Dean grinned.

“Yeah? You think I’m pretty?”

She shrugged.

“Everybody thinks you’re pretty, Winchester, get over it.”

“Hm. But, now, d’you think I’m as pretty as _Cas_?”

She arched a brow.

“This sounds like a trick question, Deano.”

“Nah. Not really. Just, you know. I was thinkin’ it’d be nice if you thought Cas was pretty, ‘cause my friend over there hasn’t, uh, had the pleasure of, uh, the experience—”

Meg narrowed her eyes.

“Dean Winchester, are you seriously asking me to take your boyfriend’s virginity?”

Dean made a face.

“What?” he asked, and Meg grinned, hitting him on the chest.

“Kinky. I like it. Sure, if angelface is up for it. You really think you wanna leave him alone with me, though?”

Actually, now that she mentioned it, Dean felt a little — maybe a lot — weird about the situation, but that was probably just because this conversation necessitated him thinking in detail about his best friend, who was like a brother to him, having sex, and that — you know, it was weird.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I?”

Meg just shook her head and winked.

“Whatever. Tell him to meet me in the guest bedroom upstairs in ten, okay?”

Dean grinned.

“You’re the best, Meg.”

“Don’t forget it.”

So Dean, pretty pleased with how his plan was working out, went over to Cas and clapped him on the back so hard he doubled over.

“Tonight’s the night, buddy.”

Cas stared.

“The night of what?”

“The night you lose your V card.”

Cas stared some more, and Dean’s grin widened.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

Dean sighed.

“I’ve got you, Cas. Guest bedroom upstairs. Time to become a man.”

Cas’s eyes widened, the color leaving his face a little as he strained to look at the hand on his back.

“You — you want — n-now? I — I didn’t think you even — Dean — why?”

“Come on, man. You’re my best friend, s’my job to look out for you. And tonight that means making sure you leave this house blissfully deflowered, capisce?”

Cas’s face fell.

“Oh.” He swallowed. “You — just — because we’re friends. I . . . I don’t know, Dean. I’m not sure if this is a good idea.”

“What? Why not?” And then Dean realized he’d failed to lead with the most important part; duh. Cas hadn’t even wanted to kiss a random person, he sure as hell wouldn’t jump into bed with one. He burst out laughing. “Shit, sorry, man. It’s Meg. I already talked to her and everything, she’s down.”

Cas’s brow dipped.

“I — what’s Meg?”

“Upstairs! Waiting for _you_ , stud,” he added, winking. Cas’s face froze, doing some weird sort of twitching thing Dean was way too drunk to dry and decipher. Nerves, probably. Meg was super hot, and more than a little intimidating. “Dude, don’t worry. It’ll be awesome. Meg’s like — you know, you hear people talk, she knows what she’s doing.”

Cas was just looking at him, and Dean realized what that sounded like.

“Shit, not that — I don’t mean she’s a slut, ‘cause she’s not, she’s cool, I mean, you know that, you like Meg. And like, she’s smart, so you’re not gonna — I don’t know, catch anything, I don’t think she’d — look, I just mean — she’s good at this, you’re going to have a great time.” Dean hoped that made sense. Meg really wasn’t a slut, even if he did hear a lot about her; he suspected the people she hooked up with were more her conquests than the other way around, if you had to say. Honestly, Dean didn’t actually know anybody who was really a slut the way they talked about on TV, who actually just slept with anybody who asked, which now that he really thought about it, was kind of worrisome behavior. Like, they’d all gone to school together for years now, so if somebody was doing that, maybe they should make sure that person was okay.

Anyway, Cas hadn’t moved an inch, let alone run up the stairs enthusiastically, and Dean sighed, fishing the condom out of his back pocket, and enfolding it in Cas’s limp hand.

“Look, take this, make sure you use it, tell her how pretty she is a lot, and just relax, ‘kay?” He hauled Cas to his feet, and Cas stumbled, unsteady. “Go get ‘er, tiger.”

Cas didn’t smile back, though, and he looked at Dean for a long time, expressionless, before finally, without a word, he turned and went up.

Dean watched him go, knowing he should be patting himself on the back for his masterful orchestration skills, but it was weird; all of a sudden, he felt kind of uneasy about the whole thing.

In the end, Cas was up there for three hours. Dean had sobered up by that time, and although he usually didn’t get sick from drinking (at least, not from just a few beers), he found himself on the verge of puking by the time Cas and Meg walked down the stairs, her arm around him.

And after that — well, after that, everything changed.

“Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Now that Cas mentions it, do you feel like anything changed in high school?”

Dean stares hard at the wall, gripping the edge of his chair tightly.

“Come to think of it, yeah. _Cas_ did.”

Cas doesn’t deny it.

They drive home in silence, and when they get there, they don’t talk about it.

Couples' Therapy sucks.

Ultimately, Pamela told them to stop and really think before they speak, to determine whether or not what they were about to say was really relevant — was really _constructive —_ to what was currently happening; to consider, seriously, whether they actually meant it, or felt like the moment called for conflict, or if they were still trying to score points in an old, dysfunctional game.

So that’s what they try and do as they move into Week Two of dating.

Week One had been a disaster of sniping and griping and deliberately misplacing each other’s shit in retaliation for minor offenses which weren’t actually offenses as much as ‘stuff I’m not used to living with,’ and Pamela had frankly said that it sounded like they were _both_ failing; the bickering seemed to be the root of it, she informed them, and since the bickering was rooted in something that was a little trickier to get to the bottom of and resolve, they had to settle for just not fighting so much.

Which, you know. Easier said than done.

“Hamper,” Cas says, without looking up, and it’s a genuine struggle for Dean to hold back a groan as he picks his shirt up and throws it into the basket. “Thank you.”

There’s not a trace of sarcasm in Cas’s tone, and somehow that makes it worse.

The shitty thing about living with Cas nowadays is that, while there might not be wild parties or sketchy looking guests filtering through at all hours, Cas is no longer a student attending classes; he’s an adult, with a Real Job, and the fucker didn’t have the decency to get one that kept him out of the house like a normal person.

Nope, Cas used his linguistics major and the bazillion languages he’s fluent in to snag a cushy stay-at-home gig translating novels, and that means he’s there _all the fucking time._

Dean scowls at his back, shucking his jeans and throwing them over the sofa before heading to the bathroom.

“Dean,” Cas growls. “ _Hamper._ ”

“They’re not dirty, Cas,” Dean shoots back, smug, pausing at the mouth of the hall.

Cas huffs, turning to look at him, and Dean waits expectantly. Cas blinks at him for a moment, then looks to the side with a glower.

“Then put them in the bedroom.”

“I gotta put ‘em back on after my shower,” Dean reasons. “Why transport them all over the place? Lighten up, buddy, they’re gonna be there for like, thirty minutes.”

(Dean normally doesn’t need that long in the bathroom, but given the stipulations of their bet, showers are now sacred blocks of time much longer than they were when he was a free man living alone.)

“Then take them in the bathroom with you!” Cas turns back to the pile of papers in front of him, and Dean’s ready to make a snide remark about him cluttering up every available surface with the miscellaneous detritus of his work papers when Pamela’s voice wriggles into his ear, an ominous warning echo.

_It sounds like you’re both failing._

He sighs.

“Okay. Sorry, man. I didn’t realize it would be such a big deal.” Cas’s shoulders tense, and Dean hurries on. “It’s your space, too. I’ll try to do better.”

The dark head turns, one visible eye narrowed in clear suspicion, and Dean shrugs, snatching his pants off the sofa.

“See you in a bit,” he offers, and scoots off to the bathroom.

By the time he throws on his jeans, draping the towel over his bare shoulders, and wanders back out into the common area, Cas has moved to the kitchen to heat up a pot of coffee.

Dean is sorely tempted to snap the towel at his ass, but he’s _trying_ , God damn it.

“Little late for coffee, buddy,” he says cheerfully, and Cas stiffens, spinning. Dean tries a friendly smile, because fine, he can see how that sounded a little critical, but Cas stares in the direction of his exposed sternum for such a long moment Dean nervously checks his clenched hands for kitchen knives.

Finding them empty, Dean relaxes, moving past him to grab a glass from the cupboard.

“I slept late,” Cas mutters behind him. Dean shrugs.

“Catchin’ up on work? Guess that means you don’t want me out here distracting you with Netflix, then.”

He can practically feel Cas’s eyes on his back, but he busies himself pulling the milk out of the fridge and filling the glass.

“It’s fine. I can do—” Cas starts, and Dean angles toward him slightly to listen, knocking back the glass and taking a deep swallow. Cas swiftly turns away and fiddles with the coffee pot. “Both. I can — do both. It’s nice to see you using a glass instead of the carton.”

Dean rolls his eyes, setting the now empty glass down.

“Please. I’ve seen you do it.”

“Yes, Dean, when I’m the sole owner of the milk carton.”

Dean bites back a snide _whatever,_ and shrugs.

“That’s fair. What do you wanna watch?” he asks, wandering out of the kitchen to the sofa.

“Um.” Dean hears the coffee pot shifting on the counter. “Whatever is fine. I’ll only be half-paying attention.”

“Cool.”

Dean turns on Dr. Sexy, and Cas spreads his coffee and papers over the coffee table, putting his knees up as he leans against the arm of the sofa.

There’s a weird impulse to drag Cas’s feet into his lap, and he might have done it five years ago, but now there’s years worth of carefully negotiated distance between them and while he’s ninety-percent sure Cas wouldn’t think anything of it, there’s still the chance that the familiarity has become unwelcome.

So Cas shuffles his papers, muttering to himself, and Dean watches his trashy TV, and the evening’s not so bad, for once.

A few hours later, Cas has fallen asleep on the sofa, so Dean throws a blanket over him before heading to bed. By the time Cas stumbles in, an hour after that, he’s mostly asleep.

A couple of thumps and banging sounds ensue, followed by a hiss of pain, so Dean takes pity on him and flips on the lamp. Cas blinks sleepily at him, grunts, and turns to grope around in his drawer for pajamas.

Anyway, Dean’s half-asleep, which is probably why he lies back and watches as Cas strips down, the dim glow of lamplight casting shadows across his lithe body. Guy could stand to eat more, he thinks tiredly. Though to be fair, Cas has run every day for as long as Dean has known him, and _boy_ does it show.

He’s almost disappointed when his scrutiny is interrupted by Cas pulling on pajamas, but then he reminds himself to be grateful Cas has decided to _wear_ pajamas during their arrangement. Actually, aside from this little display, his exhibitionist buddy has been scrupulous about covering up; Dean’s never seen him come out of the bathroom anything less than fully dressed.

The thought fizzles to static when Cas turns around, and Dean jerks upward.

“Is that my Metallica shirt?”

Cas freezes.

“Uh.” His eyes are wide, now — alert. Dean frowns deeply at him, but Cas just asks, “Is it?”

“I think it is. I haven’t seen it since college. I thought one of your druggie friends stole it.”

“I . . . well, you left it behind, when you moved out.”

“I moved out, not _away_. Damn it, Cas, I specifically asked you about that!”

“Well — I didn’t find it for a while!” he shot back, clearly irritated.

“And when you did, you — what? Assumed I must not want it anymore? It was my favorite!”

“I forgot,” Cas mumbles, shuffling to his side of the bed and sullenly climbing in.

“My ass you forgot.”

“Dean, shut up and go to sleep. It was years ago.”

“ _My favorite!_ ” he repeats indignantly, and Cas flops back with a huff.

“Well, now it’s _my_ favorite.”

“ _What_? You’re not gonna give it back?”

“No. Now go to sleep.”

Dean’s speechless with anger, and exhausted, so he does.

Dean is civil the next morning, despite the fact that he now knows Cas absconded with his favorite fucking shirt several years ago, and uses it to — to sleep in, apparently, which — Dean doesn’t know if that’s better or worse than using it as daywear; waking up to the shirt bunching up against his ribs while he glared into the mess of dark hair making his neck sweat had put a knot in his stomach, and that knot twists every time he thinks of Cas tucked up in bed over the years, wearing the thing until it became even softer than it started out.

But he supposes he doesn’t need to be thinking about it, because it has zero relevance to anything, and also Cas clearly stated he would not be returning the shirt, so Dean should just forget about it.

(He can’t. The shirt _was_ even softer than he remembered when he’d put his hands on it, pushing Cas away so he could get up. It was a little faded in the morning light, and all of it meant Cas probably wasn’t lying when he said it was his favorite, that he probably wore it to bed all the time, warm and cozy, all snuggled up with his pillow, the fabric nestled close against his skin, absorbing that distinctly _Cas_ scent and — nope. Nope, think of other things.)

So despite his general irritation, Dean is determined not to let all his suffering be for naught, and after sliding a plate full of omelette and sausage underneath Cas’s tightly-gripped coffee mug, he politely inquires about his plans for the day.

Cas squints at him.

“Translating work.”

Dean bites back a sigh.

“Okay. Anything else?”

“I do put in full work days, Dean, not that it’s any of your business.”

“Didn’t say you didn’t, dude, jesus. I’m just bein’ polite.”

Cas still looks doubtful, but after a few moments of Dean’s angry chewing, his shoulders relax.

“A couple books I ordered are getting here today. I’ll probably start on one.”

Dean grins around a mouthful of egg.

“Nerd.”

“As if you’re a stranger to reading for _pleasure_ ,” Cas shoots back smoothly, a bit of bite to the last word, and there’s something about the low emphasis that has Dean shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

“ _Fun_ books,” he retorts. “I bet yours are a microscopic history of the Western Mississippi River dialect or whatever.”

“That’s not a thing, Dean,” he refutes, dry, but there’s a twinkle in his eye, and just like that, Dean’s feeling about ten times brighter this morning.

They finish breakfast with some light speculation about the Dr. Sexy cliffhanger and a few more halfhearted barbs, and then it’s time for Dean to get to work.

“I’m gonna head out, Cas. There’s a turkey sandwich in the fridge. It better be gone by the time I get home.”

That gets him a startled look.

“Uh. What?”

Dean shrugs into his jacket, nonchalant.

“Dude, you haven’t done the shopping once since we moved in, and as the only person who cooks — which, really? You still can’t? — I’m familiar enough with inventory to know you haven’t been eating during the day. Which, again, _really_? You’re not in college anymore, man.”

“I lose track of time,” Cas mutters defensively.

“Well, I made it easy for you. Eat it. I’m pretty sure letting you starve to death is an automatic loss as far as who’s-the-better-boyfriend goes.”

Cas says nothing, and Dean awkwardly rolls his shoulders.

“Okay, then. Later, buddy,” he says, reaching for the door.

“Thank you,” Cas calls out quickly. “I’ll eat it.”

“That’s my boy,” Dean quips, quickly escaping before Cas can throw anything at him.

He wasn’t lying; he’s pretty sure actively caring for his (fake) boyfriend’s health will score him major points with Pamela. And making extra lunch to throw in the fridge when he has to prepare his own anyway isn’t a big deal, so it’s really a double-win for Dean.

But if he’s being totally honest, Cas used to pull this shit back in college all the time. He’d get wrapped up in his studies, or his parties, and it would take an over-tightened belt to keep his stupid pants anywhere in the remote vicinity of his hips, and Dean would get alarmed and make a concentrated effort to feed him until he was satisfied child protection services weren’t going to come after him. (“That makes zero sense, Dean,” Cas would complain. “I’m not a child.” “Oh, yeah? Could have fooled me.” And they’d glare at each other until the meal was gone and they both felt better.)

And even later, after Dean had moved out and they'd only sort of got back to normal, he worried about it. Part of the getting-some-distance thing he was doing meant he’d tried to remind himself it _wasn’t_ his responsibility, and he mostly stuck to that, but when he did think Cas was looking a little skinnier, he dragged him out to places that conveniently happened to serve food a lot more often.

Old habits really do die hard, he supposes.

“So, um, for our first date,” Cas begins stiltedly that evening, while Dean is still admiring the fucking _pristine_ kitchen he came home to (the goddamn floor got _mopped,_ and the cooktop is practically sparkling), “I was thinking mini-golf.”

Dean runs a hand over the gleaming quartz counter.

“Uh-huh. But won’t we miss the sock hop?”

Cas huffs.

“Dean. I don’t — _date_. And the rules we agreed upon said we have to take turns planning. I’m sorry if I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Nah, it’s fine. I’m just givin’ you a hard time. Sounds like a plan, although Pam might give it a low romance rating.”

“In what way is mini-golf less romantic than dinner?” he protests. “Multitasking between forced conversation and mastication seems much less romantic than — than the close interactivity and inevitable tension of friendly competition.”

Dean blinks.

“Dude, I know you don’t date, but it’s really rude to 'masticate' at the dinner table,” he says with a smirk, ignoring the ‘inevitable tension’ thing, because obviously that would only apply on a _real_ date, which this will not be, so Dean just — doesn’t need to worry about it.

Cas narrows his eyes, like he’s debating whether to lecture Dean or not, then smirks right back.

“You’re right. The polite thing to do is to get your date off first.”

Dean grins.

“See? Experience or not, you’re a natural, Cas.” He glances around the kitchen. “And, uh. Thanks for cleaning up. Looks like you did the works. I appreciate it.”

Cas just shrugs.

“I had time.”

“Thought you’d read one of your books if you had time. Not to mention you hate cleaning kitchens.” Cas is a strange blend of very tidy and staggeringly messy, the mode seeming to depend on the area of application. The kitchen — a place he spends very little time — is one rarely subjected to his cleansing ministrations.

He arches a brow at Dean.

“That was a very good sandwich. Maybe this is a ploy to encourage future production.”

“Is that right?” Dean asks, pleased. A part of him had considered that the cleaning might be a gesture of thanks, but you could never be sure with Cas. Of course, he could also just be trying to earn fake-boyfriend points. “S’long as you eat it, I don’t mind making a second lunch for you when I do mine.”

Cas inclines his head.

“I’d appreciate that. Thank you, Dean.”

And the whole exchange has become weirdly formal, especially for _them,_ so Dean meanders to the fridge and starts pulling stuff out for dinner.

“God, I’m starved. Hope you like spaghetti,” he says, slipping his totally-not-dorky Dr. Sexy apron over his head (it has a cameo of Dr. Sexy in a chef hat and says _Chef Sexy_ ) and turning back around. Cas is watching him, in that intent way of his that he didn’t _quite_ grow out of with everything else.

“I like everything you make, Dean,” he says, not a hint of mockery in his words, and Dean swallows hard, because he was trying to dispel the discomfort of the atmosphere, not add a weird charge to it.

“That’s good, buddy, ‘cause that’s what you’ll be eating for the next several months. Get the radio for me?”

Cas obliges, without protest to either, and Dean throws himself into the task of cooking with vigor.

Cas’s shirt thievery gives him an idea, though.

Now, Dean’s generally a pretty good roommate, according to past reviews. He never lets his residence descend into the levels of filth stereotypically characteristic of young men, he doesn’t eat other people’s food, and he’s — usually — pretty good about giving advance notice when he has somebody over.

Of course, everybody has their flaws, and if you did ask any of Dean’s old roommates, including Cas, what one of his worst faults was, it would be his strong aversion to laundry.

Dean likes having clean laundry. Dean’s actually a very clean person, thank you, and he doesn’t suffer grime and filth kindly.

Laundry, however, is kind of a gray area. It’s dirty, but not in an icky, germy way, and it’s also a huge fucking pain in the ass to do, so it tends to just . . . pile up.

And then Dean needs clothes, right? And since he mostly rooms with fellow dudes, who are frequently close enough in size to him that borrowing works in a pinch . . .

Anyway, this is the third week they’ve been doing this, Cas is taking him mini-golfing tonight (because tattoos and piercings and a tendency to skirt the lines of substance abuse have made his best buddy no less of an old fogey at heart) and since the selfish bastard was serious about not giving back the Metallica shirt (Dean had surreptitiously rummaged through the drawer he’d originally seen it appear from, only to have Cas materialize behind him and coolly inform him, “Look all you want, Dean, you won’t find it.”) it seems perfectly reasonable to pilfer a t-shirt to wear to work.

And, you know, it’s kind of a cold, rainy day, and since all Dean has are leather jackets and a couple worn, scratchy hoodies that are marinating in the hamper, it also seems reasonable to grab one of the impossibly soft sweaters hanging in Cas’s side of the closet while he’s in there. He tugs it over one of his plaids, the collar of which pokes out of the sweater in goofy disarray, and reasons that he’ll take it off before he gets to work (he needs it to wear to mini-golf, anyway, since that’s this evening and the course is outside).

And Jesus _C_ _hrist,_ the sweater is soft; in his own, stealthy little way, Cas is one high-maintenance son of a bitch, isn’t he?

But yeah, Dean tucks it in his locker before he settles elbow-deep in an engine, and then carefully totes it back home to put on after his shower.

Cas does a double-take when he walks in, which Dean chalks up to Cas being weird or maybe Dean smelling like car innards, and Dean gives him a sunny smile and promises he’ll still be ready to go on time.

When Dean comes out of the bathroom, cozy in the borrowed sweater, Cas is dressed and sitting in the kitchen, and the table nearly upends when he shoots to his feet. He stares hard at Dean.

“Is there something wrong with your closet?”

“Huh?” Oh. Yeah, he probably noticed the t-shirt earlier. “Uh, sort of. I’m behind on laundry—”

“You _must_ have outgrown that by now,” Cas says, lips pursed. Dean shrugs.

“Dude, you have like a million sweaters.”

“But—” Cas’s jaw works. “But you should at least ask.”

“You were asleep.” Because Dean was incredibly careful to stay quiet while he nabbed the garments, but you know, that’s not important. He tilts his head; Cas had grumped about it when it happened back in college, but now the dude appears to be having some kind of internal meltdown just ‘cause somebody else put on his sweater.

But once again, a voice that sounds an awful lot like Pamela’s is reminding him that he’s supposed to be a _considerate_ boyfriend, and even if _Dean_ doesn’t see what the problem is, it clearly bothers Cas. He sighs, reaching for the hem.

“Sorry, man. I can change.”

“No,” Cas says quickly, making an abortive hand gesture, face screwed up. “Leave it, it’s fine — just — next time—” he takes a deep breath. “Alright. Let’s go.”

And Dean feels bad, but he’s pleased, because that looked an awful lot like Cas trying, and while Dean is determined as hell to be the winner of the bet, he suspects it’ll be a lot easier — and a lot more pleasant — if Cas cooperates at least a _little._

“Yeah, okay. Thanks — I’ll do the wash tomorrow.”

Cas gives him a pained onceover and nods shortly.

“Please.”

And then he leads Dean out the door.

Mini-golf isn’t so bad.

Not for Dean, anyway.

“Huh. I think this is my new lucky sweater,” he remarks, not _that_ smugly, and Cas shifts unhappily in the passenger seat.

“You got lucky.”

“Uh, I think I would have remembered that,” Dean shoots back cheekily, but Cas just lifts his chin.

“Whatever. You’ve still never beat me at bowling.”

“Because I’m not _sixty._ ”

“Ah, yes, I’m an old man. How cutting.”

“Anyway, ‘course you’re better at bowling. You’ve got a lot more practice handling balls.”

Cas’s expression goes flat as Dean brings the car to a stop for a red light, and Dean takes the opportunity to give him a gleeful look.

“I don’t believe you,” Cas says, refusing to look at him, but Dean swears he sees his lips twitch.

Overall, week three was good, and Cas doesn’t even seem sore about his mini-golf loss on date night. They’ve fallen into a sort of rhythm which, if Dean’s being honest, is unexpectedly _nice._ Week four goes even more smoothly; he’s starting to feel comfortable in his own home again. They fight less (Dean doesn’t count it as a fight if no one storms out), and Cas uttered one of his deadpan lines while watching TV the other day that had Dean laughing for about five minutes straight.

Really, it almost feels like old times. Just almost, and maybe not quite like old-old times, but it’s enough that Dean doesn’t get a huge knot in his stomach when he thinks about the next few months.

The biggest thing he can complain about is his new roommate’s koala-esque bed habits. That, of course, is _nothing_ like old times, and Dean doubts he’ll ever get used to it; and since _actually_ complaining about it is out of the question, he determines to just wriggle away from Cas if the octo-cuddle wakes him up, and beyond that, he makes sure he’s the first one up so Cas never, ever has to know.

As it turns out, however, therapy exists solely to upset the status quo.

“So, one month! And you’re both still here. How has it been, living together? Sometimes the most difficult thing can be to adjust to another person’s habits.”

Dean shrugs, not really thinking.

“It’s not as difficult to readjust.”

Pamela fixes him with an expectant look.

“What do you mean?”

Dean shrugs again.

They haven’t deliberately withheld history, or anything, but Pamela’s only gotten a few snippets of it here and there, since both of them tend to clam up any time the past gets mentioned.

“We roomed together in college for a bit.”

“Seven semesters,” Cas specifies softly. Pamela blinks.

“Of eight?”

“Yep,” Dean confirms, tensing. He knows what she’s about to ask, and he doesn’t want to talk about it; and he definitely doesn’t wanna talk about it in front of Cas.

“Consecutively?”

“Yes. Dean moved out when we had half of senior year remaining.”

“I see. Why was that?”

Cas is silent. Dean says nothing.

“I don’t know,” Cas says finally. Pamela looks to Dean.

“Dean?”

“Uh,” he says, hating that Cas is _right there,_ and refusing to answer is in some ways almost as embarrassing as the truth. “I don’t know, our habits were gettin’ more and more different and, uh, last semester before graduation was gonna be stressful for me, so — I just thought it’d be better to get my own place.”

“Was there a particular catalyst among your . . . different habits, that prompted this? A move for just six months seems like a big leap, if the semester before had gone alright.”

Cas is looking at him, expression shuttered. Dean swallows and looks down.

“I don’t know. I just — was nervous. Cas had people over a lot, kept weird hours. It was startin’ to wear on me.”

Pamela makes a ‘hmm’ing noise, and Cas frowns.

“You should have said something. We only had a semester left. I would have worked out something different.”

Dean tries a smile.

“Yeah, but you shouldn’t have had to, so I worked something out instead. It ended up being fine, anyway.” Which is another egregious lie, but Dean didn’t know how to say sorry for it then, and he still doesn’t, now.

Cas stiffens, and turns away.

“Well. Do you find living together now similar to then?”

A loaded question, if ever there was one. Dean and Cas don’t fit like they did when they first moved in together, but Dean’s not tied up in stupid, imaginary issues like he was right before he moved out, either.

“In some ways, I guess. Dude still bitches about every little thing I do—”

“That’s not true, Dean,” Cas says seriously. “I also bitch about all the many little things you _don’t_ do.”

“ _Anyway,_ he hasn’t changed much.”

“Castiel?”

“Same,” he mumbles. “Although now I have to deal with his snoring. We used to have the privilege of separate rooms.”

“Those were the days,” Dean agrees, sighing gustily. “Now I wake up half a dozen times a night to pry the fucker’s hands off of me.”

Cas goes white.

“What?”

Aw, hell. Well, too late to turn back now.

“You sleep cuddle.”

The color floods back into Cas’s face with fascinating intensity.

“You — you’re joking.”

“Fine, maybe only two or three times a night.”

Dean probably shouldn’t be relishing his horrified face, but gently pulling Cas’s warm hands and limbs off his body in the dark, unfulfilled hours of the night is not the inconsequential irritant Dean just made it out to be.

“Well, that is one of the unique difficulties of your situation," Pamela offers. "You’re participating in a lot of intimate things despite not actually being intimate with one another.”

Dean doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s always hated that way of saying ‘fucking.’ Intimacy is a loaded word, for him, anyway, and when you use it like that, it stops sounding like roaming hands and filthy noises, and instead brings to mind staring into each other’s eyes and the silent understanding of sharing something incredibly significant through touch.

When you say it like that — it makes Dean question if he’s ever actually _been_ intimate with someone.

And when you say it in the context of him and Cas — well, maybe they stopped touching a long time ago, but Dean thinks they have a few lifetimes' worth of staring into each other’s eyes and silent understanding, even when they’re at each other’s throats, and that — he’s never been sure what to make of that.

Cas lifts his chin.

“If it makes Dean uncomfortable, I’m happy to sleep on the sofa.”

Dean should be nodding vigorously right now, because what an excellent opportunity to divest himself of a nightly source of mindfuckery, but somehow his head stays still.

“Not really,” he finds himself lying. “We’ve known each other since we were kids. It’s not much different than when I’ve had to share with Sammy.”

Dean’s not looking at Cas as he spews this staggering falsehood, but Pamela is, and whatever she sees makes her flinch. Dean doesn’t dare move his gaze.

“Okay, well, that’s — good. It’s — it’s good, that you can accept each other’s more inconvenient habits. Dean, you were saying you were having trouble with some of Cas’s when you moved out in college. Do you think they may still be a problem as time goes on?”

If Dean was hoping for a change in subject, he’s disappointed.

“Well, I mean — the nature of — of the arrangement, kinda means he doesn’t have as many, uh, guests. So — so that’s less of an issue.”

Pamela raises a brow.

“That seems to imply Castiel only socializes in a sexual context.”

“Well-” Dean starts, but Cas cuts him off.

“Dean and I share our platonic friend group, who keep more regular hours than my other acquaintances, so no, it isn’t really an issue under the circumstances.”

Pamela smiles.

“That’s excellent. A shared community helps form a very positive foundation for a relationship.”

“Not a relationship,” Dean mumbles reflexively, and Pamela shakes her head.

“It is for the next five months, Dean, and if you hope to make it work, you’ll treat it like one,” she says, unusually stern.

“Right.”

Dean sighs. God, it’s going to be a long five months.

See, Dean is lying about why he moved out in college, but what else can he do? The real reason is — in addition to being fucking embarrassing and something he never, ever told anyone about in the hopes that he could forget it ever happened — not a thing he can live with Cas ever knowing. Certainly, he couldn’t live _with_ Cas, if Cas knew.

Because once upon a time, in a bizarre, mysterious bout of youthful naivete — or straight up insanity — Dean kind of thought he might be in love with Cas.

Which sounds crazy now, and it was, but Dean was only twenty-one, and his thing with Cas, emotionally, had always been a little intense, no matter who they were or where they were at with each other, and — well, he was bound to get confused eventually, because he’s an idiot.

Anyway, his confusion had been building for a while, ever since Cassie Robinson came back from break at the beginning of senior year and told him she’d met someone else. Dean had prepared himself for months of devastated self-loathing and heart-wrenching _pining,_ but instead found himself dry-eyed and even-tempered, laughing his way through a TV marathon next to Cas the week after. He assumed once classes got into full-swing and they both got busy, the shock would wear off and the loss would really hit him, but it didn’t. He and Cas went out without even getting too wasted and had fun, and then they stayed in a lot of nights and had fun, and somehow, despite the fact that he would have called Cassie his first love and he’d liked her more and dated her longer than any girl before, _Dean was okay._

And it was all because of Cas; Cas, who laid off the weed unless Dean was down to join him, and wasn’t having people over in the evenings at all, and seemed to be relapsing into the best friend Dean had felt morphing and drifting further and further away as they progressed through college.

Which wasn’t that weird; no matter how uncomfortable Dean might have been with some of the changes, or how irrationally he might have missed Cas at times, despite the fact that they lived together, Cas _was_ his best friend, and aside from their new habit of bickering half the time, Cas almost always made him feel better.

Nah, the weird thing was what happened when Dean, in his surprising okay-ness, had spontaneously agreed to a date with the cute junior chick working at the library; upon his solitary return from a perfectly pleasant dinner that was somehow missing enough of a spark to prompt Dean to accept her invitation back to her place — despite his four-month dry spell — Dean opened the door to their shared apartment to find Cas leaning back against the counter directly across from the door, head thrown back, eyes shut, and lower half obscured by a kneeling figure, the guy's dark blond head moving enthusiastically.

Cas tipped his chin forward, opening his eyes to meet Dean’s just as his lips parted on a gasp and his entire body convulsed into shudders.

Fifteen seconds later, Dean had shut the door and was hiding in the stairwell, willing his ludicrously inappropriate boner down and trying to understand why he also kind of wanted to go back up and beat the ever-living shit out of whoever made Cas look like that.

And when Cas apologized the next morning, explaining that he assumed Dean wouldn’t be coming home after his date, Dean weakly shrugged it off and changed the subject because he could not, for the life of him, come up with a good reason why he had.

So, yeah. It was confusing, and Dean — Dean got confused.

He got so confused that he could not stop thinking about the thing that he saw, about this newfound knowledge of what Cas looked like when — when he — and then Dean started to slowly go out of his mind with jealousy over all the people that came over to smoke and drink and fuck, and it made him so tense and quiet that suddenly he and Cas were hardly hanging out at all and by the time December rolled around Dean felt like he was genuinely starting to lose his grip on himself and his whole reality.

So, one Saturday, as they were sitting in front of the TV eating plain cereal because nobody remembered to buy more milk, Dean couldn’t stop himself from asking:

“So, um, any of those, uh, people you’re seeing — are you . . . seeing any of them?”

Cas squinted at him, still groggy from sleep.

“What the fuck are you asking me, Dean? It’s too early for riddles.”

“No, it’s not a riddle — I mean — you — like, are you dating any of them? Or are you — going to? Date them?”

Cas stared hard at him.

“I’m sleeping with several of them, which I thought was obvious.”

“No, I — I get that — trust me — but I mean . . . y’think you’ll like — date _one_ of them? Y’know. Like, a — a relationship.”

Flabbergasted, Cas was silent for a few moments before he let out a burst of laughter.

“Oh, wow, Dean. No. No, I don’t think I’ll ‘date’ any of them.” He fixes the TV with a bland look. “I doubt I’ll ever ‘date’ _anyone._ You have to have feelings for people to do that.”

He said it quiet, and matter-of-fact, eyes on the cartoon the whole time; and Dean — confused, naive Dean — thought, at the time, that his heart kind of broke.

It didn’t, of course, because he was _not_ actually in love with Cas, but he didn’t know that then. So naturally, he spent a week moping and trying to focus on his studies instead of the crushing hopelessness mounting in his chest, and when the weekend after finals rolled around and Cas threw one of his wild pre-break parties, Dean found himself a determined participant.

Two hours in he was sitting, drunk off his ass on the just-vacated sofa, when Cas came and plopped down next to him.

Dean took one look at the rumpled band shirt and the stupid, impossibly messy hair and the vague, lazy smile Cas offered him along with his own half-drunk beer, and suddenly all Dean could think about was how he’d wisely locked his own bedroom door so no opportunistic party-goers could use it, and it was thus guaranteed to be empty.

He took the beer, chugged half of the remainder, and set it down on the coffee table, meeting Cas’s eyes with intent.

“Hey, Cas,” he murmured — and then he leaned forward, closing the distance between them.

Or trying to, anyway. Cas’s face never got any closer no matter how far Dean leaned, and suddenly Cas was falling against the cushion with a _whump,_ his left hand going up to grip Dean’s right shoulder, holding him at bay.

“Dean,” he said calmly, eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”

And that — that was it, for Dean. Cas was practically the leader of their college’s free-love moment, and such a wide variety of people cycled through his bedroom that it had honestly not even occurred to Dean that, even if Cas was aromantic or whatever they called them — even if he was never going to have _feelings_ for Dean — he would somehow reject Dean in this, as well.

Dean scrambled back as if the hand on his shoulder had somehow gained the power to sear his skin.

“Shit.” He stared at Cas, and Cas stared back, and he chuckled, hoping it didn’t sound hysterical. “I — I have no idea, man. Woah. Think I had too many.”

“Indeed,” Cas muttered, still staring.

Dean lurched to his feet, unsteady, and faked a yawn, looking everywhere but at Cas.

“Know what? I better go lie down or somethin’. I’ll, uh, see you later. Or in the morning, whatever.”

“Okay.”

He hid in his bedroom the rest of the night, wide awake.

Over break, Dean, through no easy means, made alternative housing arrangements for his final semester, and that was that.

Fortunately, he is no longer confused — and that is exactly why he admits to none of this in therapy.

Cas is weirdly quiet all evening, which Dean doesn’t understand — until bedtime rolls around and he realizes that the thing that just got into bed next to him is Cas, and not a person-sized wooden board.

“Uh, dude, are you okay?”

There is a long silence.

“Yes,” Cas says stiffly. “Good night, Dean.”

Dean stares through the darkness, eyes adjusted enough to see that Cas is lying flat on his back, as close to the edge as possible, eyes wide open and focused on the ceiling.

And then he remembers what they talked about in therapy, and it’s all he can do not to laugh, because holy _shit,_ Castiel, do-er of unspeakable filth and debauchery, is _nervous,_ because he might accidentally snuggle his best friend in the night.

Dean almost giggles.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” He teases, and Cas turns his head sharply.

“Yes.”

“Really? ‘Cause it looks to me like you’re too freaked out to go to sleep.”

“And why would that be?” His bored tone isn’t fooling Dean, though.

Dean snorts.

“You’re scared you’re gonna cuddle me and get cooties or something.”

Impossibly, Cas goes even more rigid.

“I am not scared-”

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were having some gay panic over there, but obviously that whole _fleet_ has sailed. And how did you not know you sleep-cuddled, anyway?”

“It’s not _me_ I’m worried about,” he huffs. “Believe it or not, I don’t want to make _you_ uncomfortable. And you know I don’t — _sleep_ with people.”

And weirdly, that makes Dean feel a little better, that Cas is afraid _Dean’ll_ be offended by any unwanted contact instead of Cas being grossed out by the idea of spooning his best friend.

“Whatever, dude, it’s fine.”

“It isn’t. You said you have to — to wake up and move me.”

Dean doesn’t think Cas is capable of blushing, but if the lights were on, he’d check just to be sure, because Cas sounds almost miserable with embarrassment.

And somehow the idea of Cas lying there, too awkward and flustered to sleep because he doesn’t want to molest Dean in the night, makes his insides warm and fuzzy and amused, and that feeling somehow translates to the urge to wrap an arm around Cas’s middle and haul him close with a teasing, _See, man? I don’t mind moving you._

But the impulse quickly dies, because that sort of girly fuckery is the kind of shit a person does in a relationship, and while they might be pretending, might be _trying_ to emulate a relationship, there’s been an unspoken rule about leaving the flirting out of it.

Cas huffs again, misunderstanding Dean’s silence.

“We can put a pillow in between us, if that will be more comfortable.”

It probably would, but somehow Dean still wants to reassure him that he doesn’t mind, even though he does.

“Nah. Honestly, I don’t have to bother moving you if you’re cool with it.”

Cas blinks.

“What?”

“Just don’t get mad at me if you wake up with a faceful of nipples.”

“ _What?_ ” Cas splutters, fully turning over. “Dean, that doesn’t even make _sense,_ and also? What a fucking _horrifying_ mental image.”

Grinning, Dean gives in and sidles closer.

“Here, allow me to demons- _ow!_ ” Cas shoves him back before he even makes it a few inches.

“Go to bed, Dean,” he grouses, rolling over, and still smiling, Dean does.

He kinda has to pee sometime around four the next morning, but Cas’s cheek is pressed against his shoulder and his left hand is curled loosely in Dean’s shirt, and Dean convinces himself to just drift back to sleep until morning.

They don’t talk about it again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Discussions of loss of virginity/pressure to lose virginity: A conversation in therapy results in a flashback to a party Dean and Cas attended, at which Dean tried to help Cas out by getting Meg to agree to take his virginity. Meg and Cas did not sleep together on that night, though.
> 
> Past Cas/OMC: In college, Dean returns to the apartment and sees Cas receiving a blowjob from someone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: references to alcohol as an unhealthy coping mechanism, flirting/failed attempts to hook up between Dean/OFC and Cas/OMC, references to past Cas/Meg, references to loss of virginity, details in the end notes. Please let me know if I missed something.

Naturally, the (relative) domestic harmony couldn’t last.

Peeking out from between Cas’s notes, Dean finds a brochure. For what, you might ask?

For the goddamn _aquarium._

Dean’s not an idiot; Cas is translating novels, not writing them, so it’s not for research, and unless his habits have changed, the guy doesn’t really leave the house unless it’s to go fornicate in somebody else’s, or to visit the kind of place he might find someone to then do that with.

Given that the Terms have put an embargo on that kind of extracurricular, and the aquarium is not exactly prime real estate for casual sex partners (probably), Dean knows this can mean only one thing:

Cas thinks the aquarium is a good date.

The _aquarium._

Like, come _on._ They’re _dating,_ not _going steady._

(And yes, Dean’s disapproval has everything to do with a disdain for Cas’s disturbingly outdated ideas about courtship and romance, and absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he’s let the channel stay on _Finding Nemo_ enough times to be a little weirded out by aquariums.)

It’s a problem, is what it is, and if Cas is ever gonna go out in the world and attempt to land himself a long-term partner — you know, after Dean proves he’s going to suck at it even if he does — he’ll have to learn to do better than that. And while it might not have been that way as much the last few years, Dean still feels the pull of obligation to teach Cas what he does not know.

So this week, instead of the lame dinner-and-a-movie cop out he had planned (sue him, he’s still adjusting to the not-being-a-dick-to-Cas part of boyfriend-hood, he’s not really ready for effusive romance), Dean decides he’ll have to pull out all the stops. He’s going to have to take Cas on date of anniversary-level elaborateness.

Or as close as he can get to it, anyway; he can’t really do the big, sentimental gesture part, not because he and Cas don’t have significant emotional history, but because their friendship has comfortably evolved to one founded on _not mentioning it._

Still, he does the best he can.

“I think you wore more ties in high school than you ever have as an adult,” Dean remarks, amused, as Cas wrestles with the deep sapphire length of cloth around his neck.

Cas throws him a withering glare, and Dean shrugs as best he can with his head propped up on one hand, elbow against the mattress.

“They’re restricting.”

“I used to think of it as like, your suit of armor. Couldn’t go anywhere without the tie and coat, or you’d fall in battle.”

Cas sighs, tugging at the crumpled knot.

“Well, that was a long time ago.”

“Dude, I’m not saying you ever knew how to _tie_ one. Just that you wore ‘em anyway.”

He can’t suppress a grin, thinking of Cas coming to school with his tie on backward, or the wrong end hanging lower, his bizarrely professional, grown-up wardrobe always rumpled and untidy in some way. But that was Cas; particular and wild all at once. In some ways, it’s no surprise he ended up the way he did.

“You—” Cas starts, then hesitates, frowning at one end of the tie.

“Hm?” Dean rolls over on his back, suddenly a little melancholy for some reason.

“You used to fix it for me.”

“Oh.” Yeah, Dean did used to do that; he remembers sitting on Cas’s desk in home room, patiently unknotting and retying his tie while they quizzed each other on Chemistry or complained about something that had happened at home the night before. He also remembers, suddenly, one time in senior year when a classmate had catcalled and teased them about being married.

Dean had just laughed it off, because why wouldn’t he? He’d been confident — known it in his bones — that he and Cas weren’t like that.

But Dean also remembers doing the tie-tying thing for his little brother, who’d been hopelessly clumsy and uncoordinated until his beanstalk of a frame finally settled down, and tying Sammy’s tie was never the same thing as tying Cas’s.

Dean knows now — in his bones and in practice, too — that no, he and Cas weren’t like that; but he wonders, sometimes, what they _are_ like, then.

A drawn-out sigh breaks his reverie.

“I don’t really _need_ to wear one, right?”

Dean frowns at that, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. Clothes are an important part of a nine-yards date; they’re gonna wear ties, damn it.

“C’mere,” he says, beckoning, and Cas looks at him for a breath too long, enough for Dean to wonder if he’s crossing some kind of line here, before approaching.

Dean reaches for both ends of the tie and tugs, Cas swaying a little closer with the motion.

“Lean down,” he instructs.

“Stand up,” Cas retorts, and after a small stare-down, takes another step closer and leans forward.

The lamplight casts a pretty strong glare; Dean can barely tell how blue Cas’s eyes are this close.

He makes quick, efficient work of the tie, ignoring the way Cas’s gaze bores into him without too much difficulty; he’d tried to explain about staring etiquette (that it was an oxymoron) fifteen years ago, and thirteen, and ten, and then finally just gave up. Dude would never learn that, in situations like these, you look politely off to the side.

Dean smirks a little, imagining Cas glowering up at a dentist while the poor bastard checks his teeth.

“What?” Cas asks, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

“Nothin’. Your dentist must be terrified of you.”

This earns a head-tilt, but Cas must know well enough not to ask, because he says nothing until Dean finishes with a firm pat to his chest.

“Thank you,” he says, straightening.

“Sure.” Dean leans back, bracing his weight on his palms and just looking at him for a long, thoughtless second.

Cas looks back.

“Well,” he says finally, glancing down at the bedspread because Cas’s poor understanding of boundaries is apparently contagious, “You ready to go?”

“Yes.” Cas nods and steps away. The air around Dean suddenly feels cold. “Let me get my coat.”

He walks out of the room, and Dean just sits there, mind sluggish and unsure, before he remembers that it’s really not that complicated and follows Cas out.

So maybe it’s a little complicated.

As it turns out, Dean probably should have thought this through; somehow, he figured that because he’d done this before — not to mention it was _Cas,_ not a serious girlfriend — it would be a piece of cake. He was showing Cas, via object demonstration, how to do something; not trying to prove his love, or make the guy feel super special, or even just get laid at the end of the night — so really, he just had to go through the motions, right?

Right. And that line of thinking is why he’s _really_ not prepared for how differently the usual script plays out when the role of Girlfriend is played by Cas instead.

“Winchester, seven o’ clock,” he tells the hostess. She gives them a friendly once-over and flips through a little book.

“Winchester . . . ah, there you are. Right this way, please.” She leads them past the dazzling, well-lit center of the main dining room to a cozy corner of a cozy alcove, a lone candle flickering suggestively at the center of the table. The opening to the room is created by actual velvet curtains, loosely pulled back, but draping heavily around the doorway nonetheless.

There are no other diners in the room.

Dean swallows.

“Your server will be with you shortly,” the hostess says, smiling. “Enjoy your meal.”

They slide into the booth, Cas glancing skittishly about the room.

“What is this place?” he mutters, clearly discomfited. Dean follows his gaze, taking in the mood lighting and the deep red wallpaper and Cas’s own face, lit by the candle, eyes dark, looking like something straight out of painting.

You know what, though? Dean can work with this. This doesn’t have to be terrible.

“This place,” Dean says, “Is a classy restaurant.”

“I see that,” Cas acknowledges dryly.

“No, no, buddy; you gotta know this when you get a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. Whatever. There are gonna be times, like, significant dates, or if you’re in the doghouse or whatever, or if you’re celebrating something—”

“I believe the common phrase is ‘special occasions.’”

Dean snaps his fingers.

“Yes. Special occasions, man. On special occasions, you do this.”

“Make them wear uncomfortable clothing while you awkwardly consume an overpriced meal?”

Cas is only uncomfortable because this is way, way outside his repertoire, and sarcasm is how he handles it; Dean will be gracious if it kills him. (It might.)

“No. You go out of your way. You acknowledge the — the ‘specialness’ of the special occasion, so they know you care about it. See, you gotta do something different — something nicer than whatever you usually do, to make it memorable. It’s like, doubling down on the specialness. And it also — rekindles the romance. Makes ‘em focus on how — you know. How they feel about you. And vice versa.”

“So it’s a manipulative tactic.”

Dean frowns at him — almost kicks him under the table and tells him to shut up and look at the menu — but then he decides to play nice and think about it, and . . .

“Well. I mean. Yeah. Most things are. It’s called human social interaction, and it’s not always a bad thing. Now shut up and look at the menu.”

The server arrives then, just in time to hear him, and she grins wide as she introduces herself.

“Good evening, gentleman. I’m Becky, and I’m so pleased to be your server tonight.”

“Thank you, Becky,” he says cautiously. There’s something in her eyes, an unnatural gleam, that makes him uneasy.

“What are your names?” she asks, and Dean’s mouth falls open a little. That’s . . . not standard. Maybe it’s a thing the restaurant does?

Cas is apparently game to accept whatever happens tonight as ‘normal’ and he answers readily.

“I’m Castiel, and that’s Dean.”

She clasps the little tablet in her hands to her bosom.

“Dean and Castiel,” she coos, and Cas frowns; Dean’s not sure if it’s at the pitch of her voice, or the order she repeated their names. He stops caring as soon as she speaks her next sentence. “And how long have you been married? Oh, my god, is this your anniversary?”

Dean laughs out loud without thinking.

“God, no, like I would marry him. Can you imagine, buddy?”

He looks at Cas, and . . . oh. Cas is — not laughing. Actually, Cas is looking vaguely murderous, and Dean hopes it’s anger turning his cheeks pink, because honestly, Cas also looks almost _embarrassed._

He averts his gaze, which means he’s looking at Becky now, and the chick has the nerve to look disappointed. But not disappointed to hear they aren’t married; no, she looks specifically disappointed in _Dean,_ like he’s a puppy that just pissed in her expensive handbag.

He clears his throat, deciding to build on that.

“I mean, he’d probably kill me within a week. I’m barely housetrained,” he jokes, but the pair of unimpressed faces tells him it’s too late; the damage is done.

“Right,” Becky says, pursing her lips, tone frosty. “Well, Dean. What can I get you?”

Dean orders a steak, because it’s his night and he’s paying and he’s shot himself in the foot right out of the gate, so he might as well comfort himself with food.

“And Castiel?” she asks, suddenly warm and friendly, and Dean scowls; not cool. She’s the one who had to get all nosy in the first place! And what’s Cas’s deal, anyway? He would certainly never marry _Dean,_ and this isn’t even a real date, so where the hell does he get off being offended?

Cas orders some fancy chicken salad bullshit that would have had Sam salivating all over the polished oak table, and Becky excuses herself to put the order in with one last chilly look at Dean.

So, yeah. Dinner gets off to a bad start, and it just goes downhill from there.

They sit in silence, because whatever relaxed atmosphere they’d settled into the past couple of weeks has completely evaporated, and then they eat in silence, because Dean’s still trying to figure out how to extricate his foot from his mouth.

Cas is halfway through his girly salad when he puts his fork down and starts fidgeting with his tie, and Dean’s stupid brain decides the best way to break the ice is to double down on being a jerk.

“Stop that,” he mutters, and Cas stiffens, glaring.

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“’Don’t tell me what to do’? Christ, are you five?”

“This is boring. Why are we doing this?”

“God, I told you, okay? If you wanna be in a relationship, you gotta do shit like this.” He smirks. “Of course, if you’re ready to agree you _aren’t_ cut out for it, then . . .”

“No,” Cas snaps. “And I think you’re lying. I think this is what you _think_ people in relationships have to do.”

“Maybe, but a hell of a lot of other people think so, too, so it might as well be!”

“I disagree,” he insists — stubborn and contrary, what did Dean say? — lifting his chin. “I think people in relationships should do whatever makes them happy. That’s the point of being in a relationship, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and I’m tellin’ you, Cas, this is what makes people happy, so buck up!”

“Does it make _you_ happy?” he counters, and Dean sets his own fork down.

“Well — I — no? But you have to make sacrifices for a relationship.”

Cas screws up his face, and then his expression resolves into one of determination.

“You know what, Dean? Right now you’re in a relationship with me.”

“Fake relationship,” Dean cuts in quickly, even though it’s unnecessary.

“And this? Is not making me happy. So, since neither of us are happy, I think we should do something at least _one_ of us wants to do.”

Dean’s feeling irritable and stupid, which, not a great combination for him, and he snaps back:

“Yeah, well, what I really want right now is a fuckin’ drink. Fake or not, this is starting to feel _just like_ a real relationship.”

Cas understands the dig, and he rolls his eyes.

“Fine. Let’s go to a bar. It still has to be better than this.”

Dean stares at him, but refuses to back down.

“Fine then. Let’s go.”

They do it. They really do it; thirty minutes later, Dean and Cas walk into a bar.

What happens next might as well be the back half of some trite and outlandish joke.

The change in plan and subsequent trip over have done nothing to abate the tension, and nobody is happy when they snag a table and Dean excuses himself to grab drinks.

And maybe they could have fixed that, after they’d downed a couple shots of whiskey in stony silence; maybe Dean would have made some crack about the bar or the people or even something totally random and unrelated, and Cas would listen attentively just so he could poke holes in the statement at the end, and then they’d laugh about it and just forget the stupid argument at dinner while they talked about nothing and enjoyed their drinks on familiar grounds.

Maybe. Dean will never know, because instead of keeping his eyes down and his mouth shut while he waits for their drinks, he glances around him and notices the Dr. Sexy tee the cute brunette next to him is rocking, and he opens his mouth without a second thought.

“Hey, that’s my f- my roommate’s favorite show.”

“Yeah?” she angles toward him, looking him over with an interested smile. “But you think it’s pretty good, too, right?”

“Ah, well — maybe just a little,” he admits, winking, and just like that, it’s on.

It’s with great reluctance that Dean explains he’s gotta get the drinks back to his friend — about five minutes after the bartender slides them in front of him — and Katya, as he discovers her name is, encourages him to come back and chat some more when he gets a chance; he agrees enthusiastically, because she has some interesting (but totally wrong opinions) about Dr. Piccolo’s family backstory (Katya thinks they’re more sympathetic than the show has let on, but Dean thinks they’re a great big bag of sanctimonious dicks), and ferries the drinks back to Cas.

When he gets there, he finds that Cas is no longer angry; nope, he’s _livid,_ somehow, even though Dean hasn’t even been here the past ten minutes provoking him. Dean can tell, because where Cas was glowering and sullen before, his face is stone-cold expressionless and he’s sitting up straight in the booth now.

Dean almost asks if somebody came by and gave him shit while he was away, because much as he’d like to pick up where he left off with Katya — you know, a person who’s actually enjoying his company tonight — he would still take a detour to kick somebody’s ass.

But then he remembers Cas is perfectly capable of kicking asses on his own, and yeah, it’s probably — somehow — something Dean did.

“Hey, man,” he says carefully, pushing Cas’s three shots at him and downing one of his own. “How’s it going?”

“I’m enjoying myself immensely,” he deadpans, and then knocks back all three shots in rapid succession.

“O-kay,” Dean mutters, picking up his own pace. Cas just stares at him from the other side of the table, and Dean does his damndest to stare right back, but the truth is, he’s never been as good at this as Cas.

He looks down and—

“What happened to your tie?”

“It’s a bar. I don’t need to wear a tie to a _bar._ You’re the one who taught me that.”

“Yeah, but — I look like a douche, now.”

Cas rolls his eyes.

“Then take it off.”

Dean angrily reaches for the knot, jerkily divesting himself of the tie without looking down, and Cas watches calmly, chin high and eyes dark.

“Oh,” Cas murmurs, and something in the sudden, silken layer to his tone has a wave of heat touching Dean’s spine. “That’s interesting.”

“What?” Dean demands evenly, pulse a little faster.

Cas shrugs, leans in a little, and Dean forgets to exhale—

“You still look like a douche.”

Cas leans back with a self-satisfied grin, and Dean is speechless.

“More drinks?” Cas asks, tone vicious and Dean gets to his feet without a word and storms to the bar.

He’s not sure how it happens.

He chats with Dr. Sexy chick again while he gets their second round of shots, and again after Cas subtly mocks him through a humiliating game of darts — except this time, he doesn’t wander back to Cas’s side for another helping of disdain. Dean, at this point, is extremely drunk, this is probably one of the worst dates he’s been on in his life, and after confessing that Dr. Sexy _is_ his favorite show, but not because of the wild and dramatic plotlines, but because how everybody in the hospital is _family,_ and there’s nothing more important than family, Dr. Sexy chick (Katya, he keeps trying to remind himself) is looking at him like she wants to tear his clothes off right there.

It’s not that he’s forgotten about Cas. That would be difficult, since Dean is still smarting from being belittled through the entire game of darts, straight up to his own crushing defeat. It would also be difficult because Cas is somehow directly in his line of sight, on the other side of the bar, apparently oblivious to Dean, because what looks like a slightly edgier version of Chris Evans has his face about a foot too far in Cas’s personal bubble, and Cas isn’t doing a damn thing about it. Nope, Cas has the nerve to keep laughing, like he’s having the time of life, like he’s on a great date with some fun, charming, viable candidate for boyfriendcy and his evening couldn’t be going better. Dean doesn’t think he’s seen him laugh that much since they were in college, and that somehow makes his drunk self so bitter and angry that after about twenty minutes of periodically glancing over and getting upset all over again, Dean decides to just pretend they don’t exist.

Surprisingly, it works pretty well. He kind of does forget.

Which is probably why when Katya whispers, low and dirty in his ear, “The bathroom here is surprisingly clean,” punctuated by a deep smolder, Dean follows her without question.

And had they actually made it into them, Dean has no doubt he would have happily helped bring those bathrooms down to standard; they don’t, though. Apparently, enough people know about the relative cleanliness of the lavatory (or don’t care either way) that it is a popular destination; Dean and Katya get there just as bad-boy Chris Evans backs up to the door and starts tugging Cas in for a kiss.

Katya slows to a halt while Dean gapes at the pair; Cas either has amazing peripheral vision or a sixth sense (he has a sixth sense, Dean knows this already), because he freezes about an inch away from the dude’s mouth and swivels his head to stare at Dean. His eyes flicker to Katya, and then back to Dean, suddenly accusing (which, what the _hell_?)

“Damn it,” Katya mutters next to him, before perking up, eyes hopeful. “I don’t suppose you have a car?”

“What the _hell,_ Cas?” Dean asks, ignoring her, because he’s a dick like that, and also all he can think of right now is that _his fake boyfriend was going to cheat on him!_

“What the hell, indeed, _Dean,_ ” Cas retorts icily, stalking toward him, his leather-jacket-wearing bar floozy forgotten. “Fancy meeting you here! I see you made a _friend._ ”

“Dude,” Dean scoffs, “You get that you have no leg to stand on, here, right? You were _just_ about to hook up with some rando in a bathroom.”

“I was not! Gary . . . needed help getting a stain out.”

Dean snorts, unsure if his greater disbelief is at the weak-ass excuse or the fact that Cas was gonna fuck a guy named Gary. What do you even call out mid-coitus? Not _Gary,_ that’s for fuckin’ sure.

“I think you mean he needed help getting a stain _in_ , don’t you?”

Cas glares.

“Since you’re here at the bathroom, _rando_ in tow, you have no room to talk, Dean.”

“Hey!” Dean exclaims, glancing worriedly back at Katya, who is watching the exchange with wide eyes. “Katya’s not a rando! She knows her Dr. Sexy. And I read some drabbles she wrote on her phone while we were at the bar, she’s fuckin’ awesome!”

Katya gives Dean’s hand a grateful squeeze, and Cas’s gaze flies to their hands, impossibly furious. Behind him, punk Captain America is frowning; he opens his mouth, then apparently thinks better of it and starts backing away slowly.

Dean helps a bro out and does not bring it to Cas’s attention.

“We’re going home,” Cas declares stonily, and Dean forgets about the guy entirely, bristling with indignation.

“How do you figure? ‘Cause I drove and—”

“ _We’re going home._ ” Cas moves forward, wrapping a hand around Dean’s shoulder in a bruising grip, and manhandles him away from Katya and down the hall.

“What the _fuck,_ Cas — get _off_ of me—”

“Dean!” Katya is half-jogging alongside them, clumsily digging through her purse while Cas ignores her and moves relentlessly toward the exit. She pulls out a piece of paper and scribbles something on it, impressively coordinated given how much Dean saw her drink and the fact that she’s almost running.

God damn it, Dean feels like such a heel. Katya’s really cool. He shouldn’t have tried to cheat on his fake-boyfriend with her.

“I’m sorry,” he says morosely, and she glances up, surprised. “He’s not my real boyfrie- _ah!_ ”

Cas’s fingers dig into his shoulder, bruising.

“It’s okay, I figure I’m missing something here.” She stuffs the paper in his pocket and grins. “Maybe I’ll see you again.”

The hand on his shoulder wrenches painfully, and Dean almost trips.

“Sorry,” Cas says, utterly unapologetic, and Katya falls back with a wave.

Dean sighs once they’ve emerged into the quiet night and Cas has released him to call a cab.

Definitely the worst date he’s ever been on.

“So let me get this straight,” Pamela says, gaze flickering between the two of them where they sit, as far apart as they can get. She doesn’t bother to conceal her judgment. “You went out on a date. And somehow the night progressed in such a way that you both ended up cheating on each other.

“Well, technically, we didn’t ch—”

“You would have, if you hadn’t run into one another at the rendezvous point.” Her eyes dare them to argue.

They don’t. They _can’t._

“Does either of you want to tell me how that happened?”

“Dean took me on a shitty date and then ignored me in favor of hooking up with the first pretty face he saw. Left to my own devices, I did the same. There’s not a lot to tell.”

“Uh, except you’re telling it _wrong._ I tried to take Cas here on a nice, romantic dinner date, he bitched about the venue and the whole plan, so we went to a bar, and since he couldn’t stop taking cheap shots at me, I naturally went to talk to somebody who doesn’t fucking _hate_ me. And yeah, maybe I got a little carried away, but _see. Above._ ”

Cas’s whole face is pinched and upset, but honestly, Dean can’t find it in himself to care; Cas _deserves_ it. So what if Dean said one mildly offensive thing when stupid Becky was taking their order; that didn’t excuse Cas being as much of a dick as he could manage and then taking some guy to the fucking bar bathroom just because Dean didn’t want to sit at a table getting dressed down all night.

Pamela just sighs and touches two fingers to the bridge of her nose.

“Alright.” She takes a breath, repeats it. “Alright.”

“So — so what?” Dean asks, after nothing follows. “Where does that leave us, then?”

She stares past them, shrewd and considering.

“Castiel,” she says abruptly. “May I ask — why did you go home?”

“What?” Cas squints at her, some of the unhappiness in his face giving way to confusion.

“Well — didn’t you both violate one of the primary terms of your bet?”

“Yes.” Cas’s tone is clipped, his expression tight, like he knows exactly where she’s going with this and doesn’t care much for it at all. Dean waits, curious.

“So . . . technically, this session would be to declare a winner, and whatever either of you did for the rest of that night shouldn’t matter.”

Cas is downright _glaring_ at her now, and even though Dean didn’t think of it either, he barks a laugh.

“Ha! Oh, my god, you didn’t realize, did you? Dumbass!”

Cas gives him a disbelieving look, and when Dean looks back to Pamela, he finds an identical stare there. What?

“Anyway. So — what I’d like to know, then, is why you decided to go home, and why you made Dean go with you.”

“Because he wanted to ruin my night,” Dean answers for him; even if Cas _didn’t_ realize his efforts were pointless, Dean has no doubt his primary concern in that moment was with smiting Dean’s happy, drunk, pre-hookup buzz into oblivion.

Pamela emits a deep sigh.

“Castiel?”

Cas thinks — or pretends to think — for a moment, and then nods forcefully.

“Because I wanted to ruin Dean’s night.”

“Told you,” Dean says, grinning. Pamela might have gone to a bunch of fancy classes and been trained to stare into people’s souls and coax them into prostrating themselves before her, guts overflowing, but she will never understand Cas better than Dean does.

Still, Pamela purses her lips, clearly unimpressed.

“Right. Of course,” she agrees dryly, running a hand through her dark hair and making a note on her legal pad. “Well, then; given that you both broke the same rule — in my professional opinion, the bet’s still on. If you want it to be.”

Dean’s mouth opens, surprised, and he darts a look at Cas, who looks back at him, expression unreadable.

But, hell; it doesn’t matter. Unless Cas wants out, Dean doesn’t quit until something’s over, and Pamela just said this wasn’t over.

“I think I can stick around ‘til I finally win,” he says easily, and Cas rolls his eyes.

“You’re not going to win, Dean. And if you do, all it proves is that you _can_ be committed — to your _ego._ ”

“Shut up, Cas.”

“Alright, that sounds like a ‘yes’ from all parties. In that case, we’re not done here,” Pamela interrupts, smiling at them with a barely-there hint of malice.

“Huh?”

“You both nearly broke the cardinal rule. We need to talk about why that happened.”

“We know why it happened, Cas was bein’ a bitch at dinner, and everything I did just made it worse.”

“Exactly, Dean; _everything you did_ made it worse,” Cas cuts in.

“The hell do you mean?”

He turns away, obviously frustrated, and doesn’t respond.

“Castiel?” Pamela prompts. The line of his shoulders tightens, drawing inward. She taps the pen against the clipboard, waits.

Finally:

“I mean that Dean has to flirt with everything that moves.”

“ _I_ have to — _me_? Dude, at least I don’t _fuck_ everything that m-”

“Explain, Castiel.”

“I admit that — picking up Gary was a . . . poor choice. _But,_ Dean started it.”

“And how exactly did I start it? Because from where _I_ was sitting, you were determined to-”

“Dean,” Pamela snapped. “Be advised that you lose a _huge_ number of points every time you interrupt your partner.”

Dean slumps in his chair, sullen, but keeps his mouth shut instead of muttering, “ _Not_ my partner.”

Satisfied — more or less — Pamela gestures for Cas to continue.

“Dean began the evening by embarrassing me in front of the waitress — at a restaurant that was not to either one of our tastes — and when I pointed out that our presence there was, well, _stupid,_ he sarcastically indicated he’d like a drink. So we went to a bar.”

“I see. May I ask how he embarrassed you?”

Dean’s already feeling shitty because yeah, no, that wasn’t anger, like he’d hoped — it _had_ been embarrassment — but the fact that Cas is somehow coloring _again_ is just the guilt icing on the god-damn-I’m-a-shithead cake.

“The waitress assumed that — that we were married.”

Pamela waits, and Dean cringes, because _everything else_ about the evening absolutely was Cas’s fault, but that . . .

“And Dean laughed, and made it clear he found the prospect of being married to me ridiculous.” Cas looks to the side. “Which, it certainly is, but the server is unfamiliar with us and our relationship.”

“Dean. You understand how, on a date, that was a ‘no,’ right?”

Dean swallows.

“Yeah. Yeah, doc, I got that. And I’m—” _sorry._ “Regretting sayin’ that. It just — came out wrong. But that’s no excuse to punish me for it for the rest of the night.”

“I stopped punishing you for that as soon as we made it to the bar, Dean.”

“Then what the hell do you call the _rest of the night_?”

Cas turns to Pamela, shaking his head.

“So after we get to the bar, Dean storms off to get drinks—”

“I did not _storm off,_ Cas, I was being a good boyfriend!”

“—and doesn’t come back for over ten minutes.”

Pamela winces.

“I take it there wasn’t a line?”

“Well, a little—”

“No,” Cas says flatly. “No, but there _was_ a girl.”

“ _Jesus,_ Cas, I did have to wait a _little,_ and we were just chatting to pass the time! It would have been rude to interrupt the conversation, I did the best I could!”

“You _struck up_ the conversation, Dean; I may have been too far away to hear, but I had eyes. You were flirting. And I understand that you can’t help yourself — and I don’t care, either way — but I wasn’t going to sit alone in a bar for a mandatory date while you ignored me.”

“I was gone for _ten minutes,_ Cas!”

“The _first time_!”

“Yeah, and then I left again, to _get away from you_!”

Cas’s jaw snaps shut and he moves his angry stare forward.

Pamela takes a deep, slow breath, and then releases it, even slower.

“Okay, then. Mm. Alright.”

 _Get on with it,_ he wants to snap.

“Dean — do you understand what you did wrong?”

“Yes, fine, I said something dickish in front of Becky, but seriously, that didn’t warrant—”

“That’s not it, Dean. Castiel says he was ready to move past that once you got to the bar, and I’m inclined to believe him.”

“I’m not gonna apologize for being friendly with a stranger.”

Pamela tilts her head.

“That you were prepared to have sexual intercourse with that stranger a few hours later lends some credibility to Castiel’s accusation of flirting.”

“Why are you _picking_ on me?”

“I’m not, Dean, I promise. I’m trying to help you. Remember what the goal is, here; proving that you are well-equipped to be part of a successful relationship. And whether you do so or not, I would like you to leave my office for the last time with a better understanding of how to do that.”

“Okay? What am I supposed to be getting here?”

“Well — let me ask you this. Suppose you have a couple; Person A has a habit of spitting when walking outside, and Person B finds this habit gross. Now, the couple does not want to break up. What’s a reasonable course of action?”

“Uh.” Dean thinks about it for a moment. “Well. If I’m the spitter, I’d probably just stop spitting. S’just not worth fightin’ over. And if I’m the person who’s grossed out, I’d probably get used to it.”

“It’s amusing how accommodating you imagine yourself to be,” Cas interjects, and Pamela points a finger at him. He shrugs.

“There’s no right answer, but there’s a lesson in here for you both. When you’re in a relationship — when you’re committed to a relationship — you want to make your partner happy, and comfortable. Sometimes that means things you don’t have a problem with, you respect that your partner does, and sometimes it means you just let go of things that do bother you. A relationship ends when no compromise can be reached, or when too many are necessary, or when the balance of them is too unequal. In your case, you don’t want the relationship to end; you want to find a solution.

“So,” she continues. “Castiel has now made it clear that he’s bothered by how flirtatious you are.”

Cas frowns heavily at her.

“I — don’t think that’s what I said.”

“Yeah, his problem was basically that he was _bored_. And I’m not . . . look, I like people, okay? I like talking to people, I like making other people feel good, I like it when they make me feel good. My flirting generally doesn’t mean anything.”

“But it’s not about whether spitting outside is wrong, or whether flirting is wrong, Dean; it’s about your partner’s comfort. You did something that bothered Cas, and your solution was to be angry at him for being bothered.”

“So, what, you’re saying this is all my fault?”

“No, I am not. In fact, I think we’ve already established this was both your faults. Dean, you should have asked Castiel what was bothering him, and tried to fix it, if it was reasonable to do so. Instead, you left him by himself. That’s not good date behavior or good partner behavior. That’s _childish_ behavior.”

“It’s not like he was much better,” Dean protests, and is stunned when she nods.

“You’re right. Castiel, you should have communicated to Dean what you were upset about; he can’t read minds, and he can’t fix what he doesn’t understand. It sounds like you did your best to further antagonize him. At the very least, you should have asked to leave sooner. From Dean’s perspective, he put some thought and planning into a date for the two of you, you told him it was stupid, and all you _did_ manage to communicate to him was that his presence was only making you angry. He may have been wrong to do so, but I also understand why he left you alone.”

Cas just frowns harder.

“So, our time’s about up, but this week, I want you to work on that. You both hurt each other—” she holds up a hand before they can object. “Fine, you both upset each other. Spend the week communicating that you’re sorry, that you care about the other person’s comfort and well-being. You had settled into a nice rhythm; find it again, but make it better. Try to be more conscious of one another’s needs, and just as importantly, _talk_ about your own. Okay?”

_Like hell._

“Okay,” Dean says.

Cas just nods, a quiet little sigh escaping, and finally, they’re excused.

Dean escapes to the balcony when they get home, complaining about it to Charlie and expecting sympathy and reassurances of his justness.

He doesn’t get them.

“Dean, you _ass,_ ” she declares, appalled, when he has concluded the tale.

“Uh, what?”

“You took him to a bar so you could pick up on a chick?” she demands. “That’s fucked up, Winchester!”

“Woah, that’s not — I didn’t take him to the bar so I could—”

“Right. You ditched him once you got there, which, by the way? _Way_ worse.”

“Dude, he tried hooking up with somebody, too!”

“Well, what else was he supposed to do, Dean? Sip a ginger ale while you got laid in a public restroom?”

“Like you’ve never—”

“Not while I was on a _date_! With someone other than my date, anyway! Which you were, not that you acted like it!”

“He was bein’ a _dick._ ”

“That makes two of you,” she says, unimpressed, and Dean founders.

“I barely did anything before he—”

“You left to get him drinks, and stayed at the bar for ten minutes flirting with someone else.”

“I — you know how I am! I can’t just, I dunno, turn it off, okay?”

“Really. Or maybe you can, but you didn’t think you should have to. Have you ever done anything like that to one of your past partners?”

“Uh. Well — well, not that I remember—”

“Did they ever say anything to you?”

“No . . .”

“Which _means,_ you’re perfectly capable of _not_ being a giant dickweed, but you didn’t care. And Cas could tell.”

Dean groans.

“Pamela agreed that Cas was in the wrong, too, for the record.”

“I don’t care if you’re on a date with Professor Umbridge, Dean. Stake her through the heart if you want, but don’t go flirting with other people! It’s just _rude_!”

“I get that, Charlie,” he grumbles. “I just—”

“You just weren’t taking it seriously,” she snaps. “Which is no way to win a bet.”

Dean frowns at his phone.

“Charlie.”

“Hm?”

“Did _you_ . . . bet on this?”

Silence.

“Uh . . . say what now?”

“Charlie,” he repeats. “Did you or did you not put money on who would win this thing?”

She makes a frustrated noise.

“You would have done the same! Everybody did. Except Sam and Val — or, well, I guess just Sam now, since Val found out while she was in town last week and she wanted in, but come _on._ And I’ll have you know I put good money on you, dude, because as much as I kinda agree with Cas about the sabotagey thing, when you’re in it, you know how to treat someone right. So reward my faith, man up, and be a good boyfriend, got it?”

“I don’t believe this,” he grumbles.

“It’s your own fault you’re in this situation.”

“It was _your idea—_ ”

“ _Anyways,_ Dean, you know what you have to do, right?”

“Excuse me? No?”

“Grovel, dummy. Like your life depends on it.”

“Hell, no, Charlie. That’s not _fair—_ ”

“It’s not about _fair,_ it’s about being the better boyfriend. Bigger person. Whatever.”

“God _damn_ it. I hate you all, you get that, right?”

“Whatever. When we win, I’ll buy you something pretty, okay? For now, go kiss your boyfriend’s feet or whatever until he’s not mad anymore.”

Dean doesn’t go _that_ far — he doesn’t want to be anywhere near Cas’s feet, even if they are kinda elegant and pretty, for feet, and Dean’s watched him methodically perform thorough pedicures every two weeks (truth to be told, he’s been trying to work up the nerve to ask how to do his own); but he does try.

It goes better than he expected.

The very next morning, he lies in bed, staring over the top of mussed, dark hair while Cas drools out a steady puddle on his chest. Irritated and resentful because A) he _still_ doesn’t feel like he should have to ‘grovel’ and B) it took him about six minutes before he remembered to find Cas’s drool puddle gross (probably some fucked up leftover from bunking with little-kid-Sammy for so long), Dean petulantly remains where he is for a good twenty minutes.

But then he sighs, gently uncurls Cas’s hand where it’s tangled in his rucked-up t-shirt, and goes to the kitchen to make chocolate muffins (with extra white chocolate chips, because no, Officer, this isn’t dessert, why would you think _that_?).

Cas stumbles out of the hall ten minutes after Dean’s pulled them out of the oven, and without a single goddamn word to Dean — not good morning or a question about the early-morning baking — he seizes the steaming mug of coffee Dean had just poured for himself, two muffins, and stalks back to his lair.

Dean fumes while he gets himself a new coffee, and by the time he’s drained the cup, he’s fully prepared to storm into the bedroom and tear Cas a new one for being an ungrateful little shit.

He just barely makes it to the foot of the bed before Cas, sleepy and sated and nestled snugly back against the pillows, cracks one eye open and fucking _smiles_ at him.

Dean stares, the stinging eloquence of the righteous tirade he had planned totally forgotten.

“If we were not the people we were,” Cas mumbles drowsily, eyes shut once more as he turns to burrow into the pillow stack (Dean is not amused to note that it his pillow Cas is rubbing his face all over), “I would hug you.”

Speechless, Dean’s focus returns to staring, leaving the room silent but for Cas’s content, even breathing. He swallows, tries to find his voice before Cas has completely fallen back asleep, though it may already be too late.

“Uh, sure. No problem,” he manages.

Cas says nothing, and Dean has work, so he mechanically retrieves a change of clothes and retreats to the bathroom to regroup.

So, okay. Dean kind of — expected the groveling to be another battle of wills, where he frustratedly threw himself at a brick wall while Cas stared down from the top of it, utterly unimpressed as per usual. If that — whatever that was — is any indication, it might be easier than he thought.

In _some_ ways, that is; because things are always a little complicated when it comes to him and Cas, and right now, Dean’s a little taken aback to find he kind of wishes they were slightly different people, so he maybe could have gotten that hug.

Cas’s reaction to the muffins was not an isolated, sleep-induced incident.

The first thing Dean does when he gets back from the garage is take care of the laundry that’s been piling up, and he offers to do Cas’s while he’s at it. Cas looks up from his work, blinking in surprise, because while Dean is perfectly competent at doing laundry, he hates it even more than Cas does.

“If you don’t mind,” he agrees slowly, and Dean tosses a cheery grin over his shoulder as he heads to the bedroom, because _ugh,_ of course he minds, but he said he’d grovel, so grovel he shall.

A couple hours later, Cas is headed to the bathroom when Dean finally notices he’s _still_ in his pajamas.

“Dude, I just did darks,” he complains. “I could have put those in with the rest.”

“I needed to shower, but I was in the middle of something,” Cas retorts defensively. “And putting on a clean pair wouldn’t solve anything.”

“Yeah, but—” Dean cuts himself off with a sigh, and shoulders hunched, Cas quickly sidles past him and sequesters himself in the bathroom without a word.

So naturally, Dean has to fix this, because nagging your boyfriend about laundry is practically the opposite of groveling; his dryer goes off, but he waits until he hears the running water from the bathroom come to a halt before he opens it, quickly locating his prize and going to rap on the bathroom door.

A pause.

“Yes?”

“Got something for you.”

Another pause.

“Perhaps it could wait until I’m dressed?”

“Won’t do you any good then,” Dean says, and Cas cracks the door, eyes suspicious. Dean thrusts the blue towel toward the opening, offering a grin alongside it.

“Just came out of the dryer,” he informs him, and Cas’s eyes light up as one bare, damp arm snakes through the space to grab it from Dean’s hands.

“Thank you,” he says, clearly pleased, and Dean shrugs.

“I think I got some pajamas in there, if you want ‘em.”

“Oh. Yes, please.” Cas nods firmly, a smile tugging at his mouth, just as a drop of water tumbles from his hair to his upper lip. Dean turns away from the sight, telling him he’ll leave them by the door, and when he knocks on his return to let Cas know they’re there, he hears a happy hum from inside.

The week progresses like that, Dean trying to think of small, nice things he can do to surprise Cas or make him more comfortable, and two days later, when Cas announces, a challenge glinting in his eye, that they’ll be going to the aquarium for their date tomorrow night, Dean doesn’t say a word in protest.

Nope, come the next afternoon, he takes off from work a little early, showers and puts on a nice shirt, and meekly drives them to the live fish museum for fun times and not-at-all-unsettling existential reflection.

It _is_ actually more fun than expected, because Cas has apparently never been to an aquarium before, and he does everything short of grabbing Dean’s hand like the fucking six-year-olds they keep tripping over every time he sees a new kind of fish.

He actually _does_ seize Dean’s arm, with such a punishing grip Dean won’t be surprised to find bruises in the morning, when they get to the shark tank, grin going kind of manic as he rocks a little on his feet.

“Sharks, Dean,” he informs him, emphatic. “ _Sharks._ ”

They watch the sharks for a full twenty-five minutes, and Cas doesn’t let go of his arm once, as if that’s the only thing keeping him from crawling into the tank to join them.

And then, when they get home, toting a bag of _way_ -overpriced merchandise and a temporary membership card until the real one arrives in the mail, Cas puts on Finding Nemo without asking and falls asleep on Dean about twenty minutes in, because apparently he actually is a giant goddamn _child_ and the aquarium excursion has him all tuckered out.

Dean is very disturbed; not because he finds himself carefully maneuvering Cas from leaning against him to resting his head in Dean’s lap, where he’ll be more comfortable, or even because Dean then, for no apparent reason, _finishes watching the movie,_ even though Cas will probably want to see it tomorrow since he fell asleep.

Dean’s not even (that) disturbed when he catches himself, more than once, carding his hand through Cas’s soft, dark locks while he slumbers away below and Marlin desperately searches for his son.

No, what Dean is most disturbed by is the fact that he just spent a week _groveling,_ and he finds himself thinking that not only was it actually a lot easier than he’d expected, it was also, somehow, one of the best weeks he’s had in a long time.

“Now, I think it’s time we talked about your motivations for entering this bet.”

“Uh, why?”

Pamela winks at him.

“Honestly? I am _amazed_ either of you are still here. Charlie gave it a month, tops.”

“Hey, I don’t back down easy. And that guy over there is one stubborn son-of-a-bitch once you get him away from a joint or piece of ass.”

Pam’s gaze sharpens.

“That.”

“What?” Dean and Cas both say.

“That’s what I’m talking about.” She shakes her head at Dean’s confused expression. “Alright, let’s start out easy. Now, I understand agreeing to the bet on a whim, but sticking it out this long? Emotionally, there must be a lot more at stake than you realize.”

“ _Or_ I just don’t like losing.” Easy his _ass._

Cas is frowning, but completely failing to back him up here. Pamela gives him an unnervingly knowing smile.

“Dean, I can’t help but notice something that frequently comes up when you talk about Castiel, is his sexual exploits.”

Alarm bells sound, shrill and abrupt, in his head.

“Jesus, don’t make it weird. The two are just kind of hard to disentangle.”

“You see?” No, he really doesn’t. “And from what I gather, this bet of yours arose largely due to your doubts about Castiel’s ability to be in a monogamous relationship.”

“Well, yeah, but — I mean — even a, a different kind of relationship, I don’t think — he’s not exactly. . .” Dean trails off, looking at Cas and wondering, not for the first time, why he doesn’t just explain his aromanticness or however he defines it to Pamela so she can see that Dean was _totally justified_ in his assessment. Cas said himself he doesn’t have those kinds of feelings for people; and _yes,_ Dean gets what Charlie and everybody are trying to say about partnerships vs. creepy romance novel bullshit, but still. Being in a relationship without being in love would be like — like — well, hell, it’d be like what Dean and Cas are doing right now; best friends sharing a home. Except with, you know, fucking.

“Not exactly what?” Cas asks, voice deceptively even.

“Not exactly — it’s — it’s not just about sex, you’re also . . . prickly.”

Cas bristles — _see? —_ and Pamela lifts a brow, amused.

“Prickly?”

“Yes, Dean, please explain to the professional how I’m like a cactus.”

“Hedgehogs are prickly, too,” Dean blurts defensively, suddenly feeling a little small for the room.

“I’m not a fucking hedgehog—”

“Dean, do you mind clarifying what you mean by ‘prickly’?”

“Look, I’m not trying to start something, here, I’m just bein’ honest. He doesn’t really do touchy-feely. He’s kind of . . . I don’t know, cold.”

That’s the wrong word to use, and Dean knows it, but it’s just what comes out. It’s wrong because Cas has stopped looking indignant and is starting to look a little hurt, and it’s wrong because Pamela looks _sympathetic,_ of all things, and finally, it’s wrong because it’s not true. Maybe Dean doesn’t always get the reactions he wants out of Cas, and maybe Cas isn’t always _caring_ , but Dean’s never been able to convince himself for one moment that Cas doesn’t actually _care_.

And Cas is right to look hurt; because there are ways to express that care outside of touch and words, ways that involve clean kitchens and withheld I-told-you-so’s and quiet TV marathons because all their other friends would be trying to make Dean _talk_ about it.

He clears his throat, ready to take it back, but—

“Dean is emotionally unavailable.”

Shut the fuckin’ front door.

“Say what?” He snaps his head around to Cas, who is staring straight ahead, looking bored. “Y’know, you kinda said that when we started this thing, which hey, is _another_ reason I’m so determined.”

“Fake-dating me is not going to make you more emotionally open or less traumatized by your familial relationships, Dean.”

“ _Dr. Barnes,_ ” Dean utters, voice strangled, because _how dare he._

“”Woah, boys, let’s not fight. At least not while I’m on duty,” she adds, a glint in her eye, before she turns serious. “So, Castiel, you seem to want to prove . . . that Dean won’t invest himself? Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“But there’s no—” she pauses, seeming to think, and carries on. “Romantic element, to this relationship; there’s no possibility of a future. Is this really an accurate test of that?”

Cas hums.

“Dean’s issues aren’t about romance. He doesn’t like to commit to _anything._ While I do believe his relationship issues are triggered by a feeling of permanence, I don’t necessarily think the cause is where he imagines the future to be headed. I think he develops an awareness of being . . . restricted. In the beginning of the relationship, Dean is pursuing what he wants — enjoying the hunt, if you will. But then he feels trapped by it, and he starts closing himself off and subtly severing the bond in order to get free.”

“Dude,” Dean splutters. “I’m _right here._ ”

Cas ignores him, continuing on in that detached, clinical way.

“Honestly, if he had it his way, I’ve always thought he’d take his little brother and his car and just drift across the country indefinitely.”

“That’s not true,” Dean objects. “I wouldn’t leave—” _without_ _you,_ he almost says, but then he remembers that this is not the time or the place, because the time and place for girly magic-of-friendship shit like that are ‘never’ and ‘nowhere’.

“Dean?” Pamela prompts.

“I wouldn’t leave my home. This is the longest I’ve lived anywhere, it’s got all my friends and my family, blood or not. I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

“So you don’t get an itch under your skin sometimes to just — leave. Do something more.” Cas’s eyes are sharp, knowing; it’s probably unreasonable for Dean to be angry at him for, you know, knowing his friend of fifteen some-odd years, but no amount of therapy in the world will ever make Dean reasonable.

“That’s different,” he says quietly. “S’got nothing to do with why my relationships don’t work out.”

Cas just sighs.

“Why do you think your relationships don’t work?” Pamela asks, looking genuinely interested. Dean shrugs, gaze skittering to the back wall.

“I dunno. It’s — they’re not right.”

“Not right?”

“You seem to think they’re right when they start out,” Cas interjects.

“Like normal humans do when beginning a relationship, Cas, that’s not just me. But as time goes on — like — jeez, I don’t know. I think — sometimes I think it feels right to them, but the more time that passes, the more sure I am that, nah, this isn’t it.”

“So you feel like you just haven’t found what you’re looking for?” Pamela clarifies.

“Yeah. I guess. I mean, when you’re dating, it feels like — other people are searching for someone to be with, for a relationship, period. And I’m not — _not_ looking for that, but I’m also . . . looking for someone to _be_ with. I want someone who’s — who’s them, and then I’m me, and then we just _are,_ when we’re together, instead of, I dunno, defining ourselves by our togetherness.”

Dean’s pretty sure he just made _zero_ sense, and he waits for Cas to tear him a fuckin’ new one over his incredibly vague, nonsensical use of language. _Words mean things,_ he’ll say, a puddle of sarcasm forming between them as the words _drip_ with it, and Dean will huff and try to defend his thought, because fuck you, Cas, it wasn’t an easy thought to put into words, but Cas will just go on and on about his precious syntax and definitions and shit and then Pamela will have to call security so a goddamn murder doesn’t happen in her office.

Shockingly, Cas says nothing. His brow furrows, and he nods slowly, but not in that careful way that says he’s pretending to be serious and concerned but is actually _dying_ of laughter inside; no, he looks like — like he agrees. Like it made perfect sense. Even though it made no sense, because how could it, because Dean’s trying to express an obscure feeling he feels, not an actual fleshed out, rational thought, and even he had trouble following his own logic.

Somehow, Pamela does okay, too.

“Assuming I followed correctly, that’s fair, Dean. It’s okay to not have found the right person — or one of the right people — yet. In fact, it’s okay if there is no right person, if trying to find one in the first place is the wrong thing.” Dean swallows, thinks of Cas — wonders if Pamela threw that in there for him, because she’s starting to get that Cas puts his passion in the things he _does_ , and feels his affection with quiet reserve that never wants for more. “Castiel, do you feel like you understand better?”

Cas is quiet for a long moment before shifting imperceptibly.

“Yes, I — I believe so. He does leave his relationships because he’s afraid, but not of settling down. He’s afraid of settling, period.” Cas picks at a hole in his jeans, gently lifting the shredded white threads before adding quietly, “I can’t fault him for that.”

“ _Thank_ you,” Dean says, because he’s nothing if not a total ass, but a part of him means it.

Pamela beams, and Dean smiles a little back at her, but then:

“Now back to Dean’s issues.”

“What? We _just_ talked about my issues!”

“Your issues with Castiel.”

“So Cas’s issues.”

“No, I think the issue is that you have issues with what Castiel does because _you_ think they’re issues, though they might not be,” she counters, eyes merry.

“The hell does that mean?!”

“Dean,” Cas says seriously, “I think she means you have issues.”

“Oh, fuck you, Cas—”

“Dean,” Pamela intones sternly, though she is clearly having the time of her fucking life because of _course_ Chuckles hooked them up with a therapist who’s just as bent as the people she counsels.

“He was making fun of me!”

Pamela bites her lip.

“Castiel, don’t make fun of Dean.”

“That’s like saying ‘don’t step on the crack’ when you’re hovering over a giant chasm in the earth.”

Pamela raises her brows at him and Cas shrugs, sitting back with a poorly-concealed smirk. _Motherfuckers,_ the both of them. And why are they ganging up on him, anyway? That’s gotta be against therapist code.

“So, Dean. You, ah, fixate on Castiel’s sexual appetites.”

Good God, he’s died and gone to hell. Only in hell would anybody think to phrase it like that. Seriously, what the fuck?

“That’s — not exactly it,” he manages, and like the mature adult he is, resorts to sarcasm. “Also, I don’t know if ‘appetite’ is the right word; he’s more _thirsty,_ if you get my meaning.”

“You see how wonderfully helpful he is, Pamela? He’s proving your point for you and everything.”

“Dude, if you don’t stop—”

“Castiel,” Pamela says tiredly, finally on Dean’s side — sort of — like she should be. “Please.”

“Fine.” He sniffs and looks out the window.

“I understand you have an active libido, yourself, but you treat Castiel’s as being exceptional. Why is that?”

“Uh, because it is. And I’m not judging him or anything—” Cas snorts, Dean ignores him “—but if I’m like, above sea level, Cas is fuckin’ Mount Everest.”

Cas full-on grins.

“I assure you, I have not fornicated with a mou—”

“Alright, Dean; why is that a problem? Would you say you have any issues surrounding sex and sexuality that might be coming into play here?”

“I didn’t say it was a problem, and no. I’m good with love and . . . love. You know. Whatever people wanna do.”

“So why the preoccupation? If you accept this about Castiel, then it should be unremarkable by now. And yet, you remark on it, often.”

“Hey,” Dean protests, “That’s not true. If Cas were a monk, but he had this gigantic golf obsession, I’d make a lot of cracks about golf.”

“Do monks golf?” Cas wonders aloud.

“All I’m saying is, when you got a friend that’s really, really into something, it’s sort of front-and-center when you think of them. That’s not weird.”

“Mhm.” Pamela is studying him intently, and Dean swears that after this is over, he’s never going near another shrink as long as he lives. “So you view Castiel’s sex life as a hobby. Castiel?”

“He’s not wrong,” Cas says slowly. “In my defense, it’s as good a hobby as any.”

And maybe if it were anyone else, Dean would laugh and agree, because hell yeah, _sex,_ but it’s Cas and maybe Pam’s right, because now that Dean thinks about it, he does see Cas’s sex life as a hobby and also, he kind of hates it a little more than he realized.

He thinks back to before Cas developed this particular hobby, when they were in high school and Cas’s _hobbies_ were exclusive to ‘studying’ and ‘hanging out with Dean.’ And then it feels like a penny dropping, a light little coppery impact in the back of his brain like, ‘oh, maybe that’s why I hate all the sex, because it’s what he does instead of being my friend,’ and that prompts such an ugly, unhappy feeling in his gut that he stuffs the thought in some unmarked box and tries to reverse his steps.

So, yeah. Maybe he wouldn’t be bothered by the sex so much if it didn’t symbolize the turning point in Cas’s developing personality. Because Cas — maybe not at heart, but in the outer rings that Dean sees the most nowadays — was drastically different before he figured out just how awesome sex was and just how flexible _he_ was when it came to having it. Really, if Dean hadn’t — uh. If Dean hadn’t . . .

Oh. _Oh._ Holy shit, _he_ did this.

“I created a monster,” he breathes suddenly, and Pamela visibly halts her mental trajectory to stare at him.

Cas snorts, following just fine, somehow.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Dean. I am who I am through no effort of yours.”

Pamela looks between them, eyes sharp with interest, like maybe this is the answer she wasn’t getting out of him before. It’s not, but she seems keen to pick apart the very bones of their relationship, even when it’s got nothing to do with the here and now, so she’ll probably be satisfied just the same.

“What do you mean, Dean?”

Dean turns to her, ignoring Cas, because come _on,_ if Dean hadn’t gotten the ball rolling like that, with Meg Masters, of all people, Cas probably would have held out until his eventual marriage to some boring, vanilla girl from his parents' church.

Weirdly, Dean’s almost relieved that didn’t happen.

“There was a party at the end of Senior Year. Cas had never even been kissed, so I, awesome friend that I am, got Meg Masters to take his virginity. You’re welcome, by the way.”

He doesn’t have to look to know Cas is glaring at him. Pamela’s brows are trying to meld with her hairline.

“Oh. And how did you feel about that, Castiel?”

Pretty great, if the fact that Cas then spent the summer getting high with Meg was any indicator.

“Not great,” Cas answers, bored, and Dean rolls his eyes. Could have fooled h— “Fortunately, she did not actually perform this task for — what, another year?”

“What?” Dean manages, dumbfounded.

“Is that right?” Pamela asks curiously.

Cas shrugs.

“So — so you — you didn’t — I mean, you weren’t -” Dean stops, staring at Cas, who does not meet his eye. “Why not? Did she — like, change her mind?”

“No, Dean, Meg would have been happy to do so, at pretty much any time of my choosing. I, on the other hand, still naively believed it would be better to share the experience with the person I was in love with,” he says, tone desert-dry.

Dean gapes, and Cas freezes.

“Who—”

“At whatever time such a person appeared,” Cas adds quickly, eyes straight ahead.

The room is quiet for a moment.

“Interesting,” Pamela murmurs, and Dean is now wondering if Cas lied at that party in senior year of college, if he did get romantic feelings for people, if that meant — _Meg_ —

Cas clears his throat.

“Obviously, that never happened, and I came to see the folly in _that_ plan.”

Oh.

“But wait — you guys were gone for _hours_. What the hell were you doing, if you weren't — if it wasn't that?”

Cas slants a look at him through narrowed eyes.

“We talked.”

“For three hours? About what?”

“A lot of things. She reassured me that I shouldn’t let you pressure me into having sex, for one.”

Dean sputters, darting a quick look at Pamela, because that sounds totally — you know.

“I didn’t — I — dude, I just — sex is _fun,_ as you well know, I was trying to help you out! And don’t — don’t say it like that, it’s not like I was trying to get you to have sex with _me_!”

Cas sighs.

“Indeed not, Dean. Anyway, the point is, I went and lost my virginity all on my own, so you need not take credit for corrupting me.”

Dean swallows hard, mind buzzing with a swarm of inchoate thought.

“Actually,” he pipes up without thinking. “You wouldn’t have started hangin’ out with her if I hadn’t — so I mean, technically, I _am_ responsible for your first hookup.”

“Oh, for the love of God.”

Dean hesitates.

“It was good, right?” he blurts out, and Cas stares at him, clearly appalled. He goes on quickly. “I mean — I — sorry if I, you know, was pushy, at — at that party. But I did just . . . I wanted you to have a good experience. S’one of the reasons I asked Meg. You, um — you did, right? When — when it happened?”

Cas just keeps staring, and Dean waits, unaccountably nervous. It doesn’t help that, though it’s Cas’s turn to speak, it’s Dean Pamela is studying intently.

Finally, Cas’s brow wrinkles slightly, and he tilts his head.

“Yes. Yes, it was very nice. Enough that I’ve sort of made a hobby of it, as we discussed.”

Dean almost winces, but he’s too busy feeling a strange surge of relief. He really had just wanted to show Cas a good time, after all. The idea — however briefly he’d had to entertain it — that he might have made him do something he didn’t want, or fucked up his first time and given him a complex or something, made Dean feel — just — really awful.

But he hadn’t. He’d — well, maybe not done a good thing, but he hadn’t done something irreversibly terrible, either.

Pamela clears her throat.

“So. That’s good progress.”

“What?” they say in unison, baffled. She smiles.

“Well, you’ve both learned something new about each other. Cleared up a misunderstanding that, while perhaps not _actively_ damaging, was obviously not unimportant.”

Cas nods slowly.

“I suppose.”

“Baby steps,” she says lightly, and Dean expects her to steer the course right back to ‘why do you focus on all of Cas’s meaningless sex so much, Dean, be honest,’ but she doesn’t. “Anyway, maybe that’s enough of memory lane for a bit. Our hour’s almost up; why don’t you tell me about your plans for the week ahead?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References to alcohol as an unhealthy coping mechanism: Dean and Cas get into a tiff at a restaurant. Dean sarcastically states that it's starting to feel like a real relationship and he could really use a drink, the implication being that Cas is the driver for that. Later, at the bar, when the conflict has worsened, Cas pointedly drinks his shots and Dean responds in kind, leaving Cas uncomfortable and reflecting on some anxiety over Dean drinking in response to anger.
> 
> Dean/OFC and Cas/OMC: Dean and Cas are at a bar and fighting; Dean starts flirting with a woman, which exacerbates Cas's upset, and the situation worsens; resigned to this being the end of the bet, Cas makes an effort to pick up a man he meets while Dean is flirting with the woman.
> 
> References to past Cas/Meg and references to loss of virginity: In therapy, they discuss the events of the party. Cas notes that he did not lose his virginity to Meg until a year after that party.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean expects Cas to be snippy and passive aggressive after all the shit they dredged up in therapy — and fine, after what _Dean_ said about him in therapy — but that’s not what he gets at all.

Weirdly, Cas is — not _nice,_ maybe, but amiable enough. And it’s not really anything he does or doesn’t say or do, as much as — when he looks at Dean, his eyes are a little _softer_ than usual, clear of the same suspicion and judgment they so often hold. He looks at Dean like Dean is enough to fill his gaze, like there doesn’t need to be anything else behind it, and it’s — unexpected. Dean’s not sure what about that trainwreck could possibly have made things better, but a few days pass, and Cas is unnervingly cooperative and non-combative. Nothing he does is pinging any of Dean’s self-preservation instincts, either, or else Dean would be sure the fallout would be complicated and vicious and coming any time now.

Even Charlie notices; Cas is leaning forward in his seat on the sofa, taking the board game laid out on the coffee table way too fucking seriously (not that Dean is losing or anything) when Charlie elbows Dean and jerks her head to the kitchen. Jo shoots them a curious look, but then Cas makes a move that has Liz cackling and Benny grumbling in annoyance, and Dean and Charlie’s mildly suspicious beer run is forgotten.

“So what’s up, Dean? You guys were at each other’s throats the other week,” she points out once they’re safely out of earshot, eyes bright in their scrutiny. Dean shrugs.

“I dunno, Charlie. We had a decent end to our session with Pamela on Monday night — well, and I did grovel the whole week before that — and I think he hates me slightly less now, or something? I don’t get it, myself.”

“Uh-huh. That’s good. I can practically hear the coin-like sounds of victory. But also — what’s _your_ excuse?”

“Hm?” Dean prompts, hesitating at the fridge before pulling out a third beer for Cas. His was looking a little low; Dean wouldn’t be surprised if it was empty by the time they made it back in there. “Oh. Well, it’s a lot easier to try and win boyfriend-of-the-year when the guy you’re dating isn’t being a raging dick to you, you know?”

“Right,” Charlie muses. “What’d you guys talk about, anyway? Pamela like, never tells me, even though this was my! Idea! In the first place.”

“It’s called doctor-patient confidentiality.”

“Yeah, Dean, I get that — so _you_ tell me.”

Dean pauses, deeply uncomfortable; Charlie is his best friend, outside of Sam and Cas. He tells her almost as much as he tells Sam and, for several years now, way more than he tells Cas. She’s known him since they were kids, is like a sister to him, and he trusts her with his life.

But the idea of telling her what they talk about in therapy just — he can’t. He can’t do it.

Because pretty much all of therapy is about him and Cas. Every time they go in, they talk about the two of them, and more often than not, Pamela manages to steer them off-course and hand them sharp sticks so they can stab at the never-addressed and carefully-ignored sore spots they have between them (even though Dean still doesn’t quite see what Pamela thinks they’re getting out of it).

The point is, they’ve now logged multiple hours of discussions about Dean and Cas and the state of their relationship. And the one thing Dean _doesn’t_ talk about with Sam or Charlie, the one thing he’s _never_ talked about with them? Is Cas.

So he doesn’t wanna start now, and he doesn’t want to admit to Charlie why, because then she’ll make a big deal out of it, drive them both crazy trying to guess what there is to tell. Because it isn’t that there’s some big juicy secret wrapped up in the dysfunctional mess he and Cas make, it’s just that Dean barely understands it himself, barely keeps the occasional panic at bay that it’s all going to just fall apart for good at any moment — because a part of him isn’t sure what makes them work and is a little afraid they actually _don’t._ And the more he has to think about it — the more he has to _talk_ about it — the closer he might get to realizing that’s true.

So he treads carefully in therapy, keeps his secrets, and doesn’t say a word to the two people who would try and make sense of the mess and might turn up the very answer he’s dreading.

Charlie’s frowning at him now, and he opens his mouth to say something, come up with some way to sate her curiosity without admitting anything incriminating, or to distract her from her target, when—

“Dean!” Cas calls, sounding obnoxiously gleeful, for Cas. “It’s your turn!”

Dean pinches the bridge of his nose, throwing Charlie an exasperated look, even though he’s relieved as hell.

“Coming, sweetheart!” he yells back sarcastically and, without missing a beat, Cas hollers:

“Not in the kitchen, Dean, that’s disgusting!”

And Dean starts snickering in spite of himself (and in spite of the chorus of groans from the living room), because that joke is _always_ funny, and the sound of Cas’s self-indulgent chortling reaching the kitchen just makes it funnier, because wow, Cas is in a good mood tonight and it’s been kind of contagious and—

“Oh, lighten up, Charles,” he chides his friend, ignoring her pursed lips and dubious gaze in favor of ruffling her hair as he exits the kitchen. He doesn’t wait to see if she follows.

Cas looks up at him when he enters the room, flushed from laughter and booze and still grinning wide, and Dean can’t help but grin back. He tosses the beer at Cas, who barely glances at it as he catches it one-handed, reflexes lightning-fast as per usual.

“Thank you, Dean,” he says, pleased. “My other one is gone.”

“I know,” Dean says, a little smug, and finally turns his attention to the rest of the room. “Now, what’d the fucker do while I was away?”

Cas is in the bathroom, getting ready for bed, when Sam calls.

“Bitch,” Dean greets his brother warmly.

“Jerk,” comes the automatic response, and Dean settles into the couch with a happy sigh.

“Missed your girlfriend at game night,” he quips. _Missed you, you overworked sasquatch,_ he means. “Cas kicked our asses at Risk again.”

“Right, and why do you keep playing it, again?”

“Come on, Sammy, he loves it; he’s bad at everything else, besides poker, so we have to play his game _sometimes._ ”

“Uh, Dean, he hasn’t really been bad at the others in years.”

“Fine, but he’s not _good._ ”

“He’s good _enough._ The days of having to just play on your team in _Monopoly_ have been over for a while. He can hold his own.”

Dean snorts; he remembers those days. Cas, ten years old and new to the neighborhood, had somehow never played _Monopoly_ before. Suffice to say, he _sucked._ So Dean took to being on a team with him, and let Cas pick the game piece and put the houses and hotels down in neat little rows, because he was weirdly fascinated with all the tiny pieces, and Dean liked being Team Captain or whatever, and they played games that way straight through high school.

“Speaking of Cas playing on your team—”

Dean’s thoughts drop off like they just met a cliff’s edge and the emergency brake was stuck.

“Sorry, what, now?”

Sam huffs.

“When were you gonna tell me you guys were a thing now?”

“Uh,” Dean splutters, desperately trying to gather his bearings. “We guys are what?”

“You and Cas. Are a thing?”

“Oh. Uh. No. Noooo, no, no, that’s not — we’re not — it’s a — a fake thing. We’re just, y’know, doin’ the thing, in a — a temporary, not real way, until we can stop . . . doing the thing.”

“What the hell does that even mean?” Sam asks, voice touched with wonder. “Like, friends with benefits? Because honestly, Dean, I don’t think that's a—”

“No! God, _no,_ Sam! We are not — _there are no benefits, Sam!_ No benefits!”

“Dean,” Sam sighs.

“How do you even know about this?”

“Val, and I actually _don’t_ know about this, because you’re not being clear. Like, at all.”

“Okay, well — she didn’t tell you about the bet?”

“What bet?”

“The one where Cas and I are trying to prove the other person _sucks_ at relationships, so we’re doing a six-month fake relationship, and Charlie’s friend Dr. Barnes is gonna judge us?”

Sam is silent, and then:

“A) Dr. Barnes is not the only person judging you, and B) no, she didn’t tell me. She must have . . . forgotten.”

Dean knows neither of them believe that; no, he can practically see Valencia waltzing home from the airport the other night, brown eyes going big and solemn after Sam asked how everybody had been, and casually announcing that Dean and Cas were dating now.

The real fucking question is why _Sam_ didn’t have more questions. Like, for example, _why?_

“Right. Tell her she sucks.”

“Uh, yeah, sure, Dean, I’ll do that,” he says, voice suspiciously serious, and Dean scowls at the phone, because yeah, Sam’ll tell her, and then the two of them will giggle like school-children because Dean is suffering and they’re both awful people who find that kind of thing _hilarious._

“Anyway, Sam—”

“Dean, can I turn the light off?”

Dean glances over his shoulder. Cas is eyeing him curiously

“Yeah, Cas, hang on, I’ll come to bed in a minute.”

“Take your time. Is that Sam?” Dean nods. “Tell him I say ‘hello.’”

Dean readjusts the phone. “Cas says ‘hello.’ Right, so anyway, Sam—”

“You sound very . . . domestic,” Sam interrupts, in that special Sam-voice of his, like he’s circling a startled doe in the forest and he somehow thinks by talking to it in calm, even tones, it won’t kick him in the face if he keeps walking forward.

“Shut up. Anyway, _as I was saying —_ how are things going?”

Sam sighs, launches into a lengthy complaint about his asshole of a boss, whom he tolerates because it’s good experience and also one of the few internships that’s paid, and Dean listens, genuinely sympathetic, because he hates his little brother being so far away and he hates that some douchebag is bossing him around and honestly, it’s just nice to hear his voice and know he’s okay.

It’s been an hour by the time he gets off the phone with Sam, and he’s surprised to find Cas awake, bedside lamp on, book propped on his chest as he surveys it through drooping lids.

Dean watches him for a minute, eyes roaming from his hair, gold-tipped in the lamplight, to his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, and on to the relaxed line of his mouth and the curve of his shoulders. He has no particular thoughts about it all, really, just feels compelled to stand there and take him in, and he’s not sure why.

It was his call with Sam, he supposes, forcing himself to snap out of it; that feeling of wanting to touch base with his family, assure himself they’re there and they’re okay, is swirling through his blood and can’t help but extend a little to Cas now that Sam is off the phone.

 _We’re good,_ he tells himself, and thumps the door jamb.

Cas looks up, squinting, and Dean raises a brow.

“Can’t sleep?”

He shrugs.

“How’s Sam?”

Dean’s already ready for bed, had washed up and put on pajamas before Sam called, so he walks over and slides easily into his spot.

“He’s doin’ okay. Boss is still a dick, but you know. I can tell he loves the work.”

Cas nods.

“How are you?” he asks then, voice soft, as if volume instinctively follows lighting in strength.

“Hm?” Dean fluffs his pillow a little, quirking a brow without looking at Cas.

“I know — you worry about him.”

“Yeah. I do. But it sounds like he’s good. And he’s got Valencia there with him, so it’s not like he’s by himself.”

“Right.” Cas hesitates. “But you wish you were there with him, too. Or that he were here with you.”

Dean smiles a little.

“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. I’m fine, Cas. It’s not like it’s forever.” And even though he worries sometimes, he knows Sam fully intends to move back home when he can. “This is his home, after all. He’s gonna come back.”

“Of course,” Cas agrees quietly, but there’s some hesitation there, something shadowed in his eyes, and Dean frowns at him.

“You think he won’t?”

“What? Oh. No, I’m sure Sam will.” And he sounds like he means it, enough that long after they’ve said good night and Cas has turned off the lamp, Dean lies awake, wondering why, despite his faith in Sam, the uncertainty was still there.

There’s a car mix-up at the garage, and when five-thirty rolls around, it is discovered that some lady’s subcompact is due for pickup first thing the next morning and hasn’t even been started on. Dean’s already sent most of the guys home — was just sorting things out and closing up shop when he figured out what had happened — which leaves him to stay late with Benny and take care of it.

The thing’s been in a serious fender-bender, and by six Dean figures he’s not getting out of there any time soon and takes a quick break to text Cas.

**Dean: smth came up** **@work** **will be late so prob wont get groceries make sure you eat tho**

Dean sits for a moment, waiting for a response. Two minutes later, it comes through, and he stares at it for a long moment before bursting into laughter.

Cas has sent him a message containing a single cactus emoji and absolutely nothing else.

Honestly, Dean has no idea what it means, beyond a reference to their therapy session the other day, but he’s still grinning when he rejoins Benny at the car.

At a loss to the apparently significant communication of the cactus emoji, Dean is thus startled when he arrives home to find his grocery list missing from the fridge, which is now full of things which were on said list and — he gasps.

“Cas!” he hollers, advancing toward the island with wide eyes. “Did you — is this a fucking pie from Missouri’s?” He lifts the lid without waiting for a response, not even stopping to consider whether this is some cruel joke, and lo and behold, a golden, buttery apple lattice pie is just barely still warm within.

Cas coughs, and Dean glances toward the armchair, where Cas has a notebook balanced on his knee, pen moving rapidly. He doesn’t look up.

“Yes. It was on the way home from the store.”

“Jesus, Cas, you’re the _best —_ this is like, the greatest thi-heyyy, wait a minute.” He turns toward the living room, frowning. Cas’s pencil has stopped moving. “No, it isn’t.”

“What isn’t what?” Cas asks, shoulders stiff and eyes firmly directed down.

“Missouri’s is not on the way home from the grocery store. It’s fifteen minutes in the opposite direction.”

“I — went to a different one.”

Dean just looks at him.

“And yet you bought the store brand chicken broth from the usual one.” He shifts his gaze to where the broth sits out on the countertop, probably because Cas didn’t know where it went.

“I . . .” Cas starts, knee vibrating as he fidgets and continues to not look at Dean. There is a deep red flush crawling up his neck, and Dean smirks.

“Aw, sweetheart, you _left the house,_ to get me _pie,_ ” he teases, gliding over and putting his hands on Cas’s shoulders.

Cas flinches, coloring deeply.

“Well. I — I had to leave the house anyway, there was nothing to eat,” Cas tries, and Dean looks down at him, all flustered and desperately trying to keep his cool, and he thinks that if this were a real relationship he was in and somebody had done that — especially when the somebody didn’t like going out, and certainly not to do the shopping — he might round the chair and drop into their lap to kiss them senseless for the next half-hour.

But they’re not, and he certainly doesn’t want that with Cas, so he settles for planting a big, wet, obnoxious kiss on his cheek instead, relishing the undignified yelp that follows.

“ _Dean,_ ” Cas complains, wiping his face, and Dean just chuckles, walking back into the kitchen.

“ _Cas,_ ” he says back, mock-gruff, and reaches for the pie. “You gonna have a slice of this or what?”

Cas, of course, will never not be a giant fucking buzzkill, and simply responds:

“Not now, Dean. Obviously, neither of us can have pie until after dinner.”

Son of a _bitch._

Even after that exhaustive and exhausting conversation a few sessions back, Pamela somehow still has questions.“Now, despite what we talked about a few weeks ago — and I do feel like we resolved some important things — you both seem more committed to this bet than ever,” she tells them, and Dean’s not sure if he should be uncomfortable, and if so, how much.

Fortunately, things like ‘discomfort levels’ are kind of uncontrollable, and he finds that he’s actually _pretty damn uncomfortable._

“So . . . Dean. You seem to have gained a better understanding of — a better appreciation for — Castiel. In fact, you were just telling me how happy you were when he did the grocery shopping in your stead, and went out of his way to get you pie.”

“Uh. Well, yeah. It was pretty cool.”

“But what do you gain by telling me that?”

Dean opens his mouth, then shuts it; that’s . . . a good question. He scrambles for an answer.

“I don’t plan on winning through any shady means. Cas did a — a good thing, for me, and he deserves recognition for that, if we’re gonna be fair here.”

“I see. That’s very nice, Dean; you’re making excellent progress, with regards to respecting your partner.”

“I always resp—”

Pamela raises a brow, and he sighs.

“Whatever. Thank you.”

“All I’m saying,” she continues, fixing him with that uncanny stare, “Is that if anything, neither of you necessarily believe what you’re trying to prove.”

Dean blinks.

“Uh. How do you figure?”

“So you still feel that Castiel is completely ill-suited to a relationship?” she counters.

Dean hesitates; it feels like a trap, if nothing else.

“I — you know, that wasn’t really the — the _premise,_ of the bet, technically. Maybe I thought — you know, he’d totally suck at it, but even if I can admit that he . . . you know, won’t suck as bad as I _thought,_ what I’m really doing here is showing him that _I_ would still be better.”

“I see.” She hums, long and slow, and then nods. “Fair point. Alright, then. Castiel? You, especially, seemed to have a change of heart about what you felt were Dean’s primary mistakes in a relationship. Why are _you_ still here?”

And Dean waits for Cas to argue, or point out that Dean has so many _other_ issues they’d probably need about ten thousand more sessions to sort through all of them, or _something,_ something sharp and offensive and typical of all the conversations they’ve had about the damn bet.

He doesn’t, though. For a long time, he doesn’t say anything, and when Dean surreptitiously glances up (since Pamela is apparently content to wait until they’re all dead before she asks for an answer), Cas is looking at Dean. Just — _looking_ at him. And not in the judgmental he’s-just-so-full-of-shit-and-it-will-give-me-immense-satisfaction-to-prove-it way Dean’s expecting.

No, that familiar crease is present in his forehead, and his eyes are a little troubled, but bright, and honestly, Dean’s not even sure if he’s _ever_ going to speak, because Cas is looking at him like Dean somehow _is_ the answer to that question.

“I don’t know,” Cas says, finally looking away, and Dean lets out the breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “I guess I just don’t like to lose.”

“Mm.” Pamela’s gaze flickers between them, sharp, and Dean fights a girly impulse to cover himself beneath her canny stare. She looks down, scribbling something on that awful fucking notepad. “Alright, then. So let’s talk about how you do weekends.”

And that’s that, he supposes, but Pamela had made him elaborate on his answer, and a part of Dean, for some reason, wishes she had done it to Cas, too.

“So, what’re you working on?” Dean asks, bracing a hand against the edge of the table as he leans over Cas’s shoulder. Cas works for a moment longer, then sighs and scratches out the words he just wrote.

“A favor for a friend,” he mumbles.

Dean peers down at the scribbles all over the page, but can discern nothing; Cas has changed his mind with apparent vehemence.

“What kinda favor? Still translating, it looks like.”

“Yes,” Cas agrees, sighing. “But I usually do novels, or manuals, or things like that. This — this is a book of poetry.”

“What’s the difference?” Dean’s genuinely curious; he knows translating isn’t _simple,_ exactly — there’s a reason you don’t just run it through a software — but if asked, he would have assumed that a book of poetry and a book of fiction couldn’t be too much different. So long as you understand the original text, you ought to be able to say it in another language, right?

Castiel shakes his head unhappily, although Dean hadn’t voiced the question aloud.

“The difficulty in translation is preserving the atmosphere, the nuances of feeling, that the original maintains. Any story worth translating is more than X happened in Y place to Z people. The words an author uses to describe what’s happening make the difference between the reader knowing what happened and the reader feeling like they experienced it themselves. Or — for example, suppose _nothing_ is happening, no concrete action or event. Suppose there’s no dialogue, but the scene is intended to be meaningful and emotionally significant. You have to understand the feeling of the scene and convey it, losing as little as possible, in the translation. But often, there are context clues. There’s more information to draw on to help understand what’s happening.”

“Okay, makes sense. And how’s poetry different?”

“Poetry is often more abstract, as is the case with my friend’s book. Sometimes it’s nothing _but_ feeling and atmosphere, and there’s very little direct translation. You have to fully connect with the author to be able to reliably translate their work; if I weren’t her friend, I would have refused. It’s more than just translating words, even more so than novels. And you have to capture the same impact, somehow, and . . . I don’t know. It’s — it’s hard, especially for me, to translate someone else’s feelings. Honestly, I sometimes struggle to enjoy poetry on its own, because I so often don’t understand what’s being said. Even if, in theory, the information is all there, I just . . . can’t. I can’t see what it means.”

Dean doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s not surprised, not really, because Cas often used to come to him for help, well, _translating_ other people. Often, it made Dean laugh, but sometimes he just felt bad for Cas, so frustrated by the things he simply missed.

But Cas had learned, mostly, and though Dean can still fluster him into confusion and uncertainty, it generally took more effort than it was worth. And yeah, maybe _Dean_ had been the one burned by Cas’s residual cluelessness, more often than not, but Dean was mature enough to admit that that probably had more to do with Dean’s unwillingness to verbalize his shit than Cas’s inability to read cues.

Apparently, that was not totally the case.

“So, um. You need help with anything? I wasn’t, like, great at this in school, but I did okay. Maybe with both of us, we can figure it out,” he offers, unsure, and Cas studies him for a moment.

A small, rueful smile pulls at his lips.

“Maybe I _should_ let you help me. You have always connected better with people — better than most people, not just me. It’s instinctive, for you.”

“Well,” Dean mumbles, non-committal. “Even if that’s true, it doesn’t mean I can help put it into words.”

“True. But I — sometimes I understand things much better, when you tell them to me — so try, and then _I’ll_ put it into words, if I can.”

Dean slides into the seat next to him, weirdly . . . anticipatory. He’d come in after a gaming appointment with Charlie intending to watch a little TV, but this kind of sounded better. Just him and Cas, workin’ on a project like old times. Dean maybe being able to do something for him, for once, that he needed.

Cas accepting his help, like it was still worth something to him.

“Sounds good. Where do I start?”

Cas slides a page over, and Dean tries to ignore the weight of that stare, heavy on him as he reads.

“So, you’re over three months in, now. I’m impressed.”

Dean nods awkwardly, unsure what to say. _It’s not that bad?_ A) he somehow doesn’t want to admit that, doesn’t want her to interpret that as _Cas is a great boyfriend!_ and award a hundred points to Slytherin, and B) it’s embarrassing. It’s fucking embarrassing that he and Cas lived together for almost four years once, and spent all their waking hours together for years and years before that, and yet they’re both such hypersensitive children that it never even occurred to them (at least, it didn’t occur to Dean) that they might, you know, manage to get along.

And it’s not like they don’t still have their moments — Dean and the laundry basket have an on-again, off-again relationship, Dean sometimes has to repeat himself because Cas hums like he’s listening but is actually engrossed in work, and fine, mornings after Cas has gotten particularly handsy in the night, Dean snaps for no reason (sue him, he’s just not a cuddler, and it’s irritating) and Cas starts snapping back and, well — but yeah; mostly, they’ve got a rhythm going, and it’s really not too bad. Maybe even better than not too bad, sometimes.

Thankfully, Pamela doesn’t feel like she needs a response from either of them, because Cas, too, does nothing more than shift slightly beside him.

“Of course, that means the holidays are nearly upon us. Have you talked about how you’ll handle that?”

Dean starts. Oh. The holidays. Yeah, that’s . . . just a couple weeks away. Shit.

“Uh. No.” He darts a glance at Cas, who gives a small shrug. Dean’s not sure what it means. “No, we haven’t.”

“What do you usually do?”

Cas remains silent.

“Well, Sammy and I always go home. So maybe we can hiatus this thing for a week, and Cas can, uh, do whatever he wants,” he suggests, ignoring the sharp reminder nagging at his brain that there was once a time, before Dean moved out in college and Cas almost — when Cas did what he did — a time before they first mangled themselves on the tracks of this epic trainwreck, when Cas _always_ went home with Dean, because Dean almost didn’t have a home — wouldn’t if not for Bobby and Ellen — and Cas’s place was more house than home, more people than family, so there was no question about whether Cas belonged there or not.

But that — that was a long time ago.

“Alright. If you both feel like this would interfere with your plans. Although, couples usually do holidays together, to some degree.” She smiled, somehow wry and sly all at once, and tugged at a dark curl. “Shame. I had a rubric and everything.”

“Oh.” Dean has nothing else to offer on the subject, is mostly focused on navigating away from it before ‘a long time ago’ suddenly becomes relevant and Dean has to think about how that makes him feel.

“So . . . Castiel, are you expected at home, as well?” she asks casually.

Cas hesitates; shakes his head.

“My family doesn’t do Thanksgiving. Sometimes a few of my siblings get together for Christmas, but not this year; since college, I mostly just . . . sit quietly.”

“By yourself?” Pamela clarifies, frowning. Cas nods, and Dean smothers the wave of guilt cresting through his abdomen. “I see. You said ‘since college’? What did you do in college?”

He grips the edge of the stupid, sink-y loveseat, sighing internally; it takes Cas a long moment to answer, and Dean half-expects him to lie.

He doesn’t.

“I went to Dean’s house. I knew his family well, since — since we’d been friends for so long.”

Pamela gives Dean a speculative look.

“And after college?” she asks, directing the question to Dean, because she already knows _what_ Cas did after college; now, she’s asking _why._

“Uh. Well. Cas was—” still recovering, but Pamela will want to know _from what_ and Dean doesn’t want to — _can’t_ — talk about that. “Not around as much, and anyway, the guy I was dating at the time didn’t have anywhere to go for the holidays, so it would have been awkward if I took my friend instead.” Pamela nods slowly, and though her expression is neutral, Dean swears he can detect a hint of judgment in her eyes.

“Why not invite him as well?”

Dean swallows.

“Yeah, well, it was my first boyfriend and we were already going through a rough time, so . . . I don’t know, I was twenty-two and I’d only just come out as bi, and somehow I thought, if Aaron and I couldn’t hack it, it would mean it really was just a phase or somethin’. I’m not sayin’ it made sense, but it’s how I felt.”

She gives him a considering look.

“First boyfriend, huh? And right out of college,” she muses, and Dean nods uncertainly. “That’s . . . well.”

She does not elaborate, and the weight of her long pause makes Dean want to punch a pillow.

“Alright. But, that was then, Dean. Why not — revive the tradition?”

“Uh.” Shit. He wished he’d thought about the fact that he and Cas were in a fake relationship and that that might affect his plans just a _little_ _bit_ , because he’s having trouble coming up with a good reason why _not_.

And then he remembers an actually pretty _great_ reason.

“My family doesn’t know.” Jo’d been sworn to secrecy at the bet’s inception, and he knew she was good for it.

“Your family doesn’t know,” she repeats. Cas is squinting at him.

“That Cas and I are . . . you know. Doing this thing.”

“Not even Sam?” Cas asks, disbelieving, and Dean makes a face.

“Especially not Sam,” he lies.

“Why does he think we’re living together, then?” Cas asks, tilting his head, and Dean remembers Sam’s call the other night, remembers telling Cas he’d come to bed soon without bothering to cover the phone. Damn it.

“I told him my place was under construction,” he tries, and Cas frowns, his bullshit-detector obviously in top-form.

Honestly, Dean’s already dreading Thanksgiving with Sam and his stupid girlfriend, because anybody who thinks one person staring mildly across the table, eyes twinkling, while the other person stares back with a perfectly calm, neutral expression, could never be considered ‘gross and explicit eye-fucking’ has never seen the two of them at dinner. Dean always used to tease him about his college girlfriend, Jessica, because they said sappy couple shit and held hands and made eyes at each other constantly, and though it was annoying, it was also funny. But Sam and Valencia? They don’t make eyes; they just _look_ at each other.

Dean pities anyone else in the world who is subjected to that much wordless communication via intense eye contact between two people they know, because it’s awful. And rude. If he does ever find the ‘right person,’ he’ll be sensitive enough not to pull _that_ bullshit.

So, yeah. Gross. And Dean doesn’t need his discomfort (definitely not bitter envy, like Charlie accused him of) compounded by Sam teasing him mercilessly about bunking — literally — with Cas, while Cas is _sitting right next to him_. _Dean_ is the older brother; he was supposed to be the one doing the teasing, for God’s sake.

“Why is that, Dean?” Pamela asks. “It isn’t a relationship in spirit, and you aren’t obligated to lie.”

Dean frowns, thinking of Ellen and Bobby’s probable reaction with a wince. He can practically _hear_ the resounding _dumbass,_ with harmony in _idjit,_ feel the weight of judge-y stares as he tries to be a good fake boyfriend with an audience of his nearest and dearest, and it just — no.

“Because! It’s — it’s weird. Like, do I pretend to be his boyfriend in front of my family even though they know it’s not real? Or do I get a free pass for the week and treat him like my buddy?”

“Dean,” Cas says slowly. “You do realize you don’t treat me that differently at home? In fact, if this is how you treated all your past partners-”

“Shut up, Cas, you know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure he does, Dean,” Pamela intercedes. “Please, Castiel, finish your thought. It’s very relevant to the reason you both come see me, after all.”

Son of a bitch.

“ _Well,_ ” Cas starts, drawing out the word, “He’s sarcastic and crass, he complains a lot, he teases me, he acts like an overexcited puppy when something even mildly ‘awesome’” Cas does the air quotes — “happens, and he is constantly trying to feed me and interfere in my personal business because — he’s bored? I’m not sure. I don’t know whether I’m being treated like a child or a pet he assumes can’t understand what he’s saying.”

“Neither, man!” Dean retorts indignantly, cheeks aflame for no apparent reason. “It’s ‘cause — you’re _family_! That’s how I am with family! It’s kinda hard to just switch off now that we’re faking a relationship.”

Pamela’s lips roll in and she nods for a moment.

“So, Dean — just out of curiosity — you agree that you didn’t treat your past partners like this?”

“Well, of course not!”

“You didn’t consider them family? Even the serious relationships?”

“Well, no, we — we weren’t there yet.”

“So you think if you _had_ gotten there with any of them, you would behave that way?”

“Uh. I mean. Sort of. Maybe — maybe not quite like that . . .”

“Why’s that?”

“Just — I mean there’s _family,_ like a wife, and then there’s _family,_ like Sam or Cas.”

“You place Castiel in the same category as Sam a lot,” she notes, and Dean nods eagerly.

“Of course. They’re — my brothers. That’s like a — a whole ‘nother league of family.”

“I see. And Castiel, do you feel like Dean treats you the same as he treats Sam?”

Cas hesitates, brow wrinkled in consternation.

“Mostly,” he finally says, and Dean almost objects, but yeah, actually, Cas is right. It’s different — because Sam’s his _little_ brother, and Cas is like his same-age brother.

That’s all.

“What’s the difference?” Pamela presses. Cas fingers the hem of his shirt, eyes far away, and suddenly, Dean feels nervous.

“Dean is — he and Sam have had terrible fights, certainly, but — those are fights. Dean’s rarely angry at Sam.”

“Oh?” She makes a note on her legal pad. “So you feel like — Dean is angry at you more?”

“Honestly?” Cas says, finally looking up. “I feel like Dean is angry at me all the time.”

Dean turns to him, appalled.

“I am not,” he insists, because _that’s_ always a super-awesome, articulate defense.

“What do you mean?” Pamela continues gently, ignoring Dean. “And why do you think he’s angry?”

Cas shrugs, not meeting Dean’s eyes and appearing genuinely frustrated — confused. Dean thinks it all looks too sincere to be some kind of weird ploy to lose Dean good-boyfriend points, and yet it’s gotta be that, because why the hell would Cas think Dean was mad at him? Sure, Dean’s grouchy, but that’s just how he is sometimes, with _everyone._

“It feels like—” Cas starts slowly, “Like he wants something from me that I’m failing to give.”

The actual _hell._

“And what do you think he wants from you?”

“I have no idea,” Cas says, sounding lost. “I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s more than one thing. I would give it, if I could,” he adds quietly, and then blinks, frowning, as if surprised he’s still in the room.

“You make me sound really fuckin’ high-maintenance, Cas,” Dean mutters, because there’s a column of panic expanding up through his esophagus and making it a little hard to talk, and for the life of him, he can’t identify the source.

Cas sighs.

“Something like that. It’s probably my imagination.”

“Dean, what do you think? Take a minute. Is there something more you’d like Castiel to do?”

Dean doesn’t want anything from Cas, except for normal, reasonable things, like for Cas to actually take care of himself for once, or laugh at all the stupid jokes Dean compulsively tells for that express purpose since Cas just doesn’t laugh enough, or to stop doling out all these sarcastic comments that make Dean feel like such an uneducated moron he wonders why Cas even hangs out with him — or how about to actually fucking look at _Dean_ instead of into the distance, eyes far away and contemplative, like the body is somehow about to follow the mind and vanish from his side. But that’s all pretty minor stuff, and Cas has been that way for years now, and Dean’s over it. He’s not _angry,_ and he’s certainly not silently trying to ask Cas to do a goddamned thing about _any_ of it.

“Um, no, not really. Cas does plenty. We’ve been friends this long for a reason,” Dean adds, like that’s all the proof they need. And honestly, it should be.

“Mhm.” Pamela eyes him for a moment, and then jots something down on her notepad, a practiced move Dean is sure therapists got together and designed specifically to antagonize and discomfit the patient, and maybe also trigger a minor crisis of self. “Well. Keep thinking. Maybe we’ll revisit that another time. For right now, let’s resolve the issue of holidays. Dean, if you’re not obligated to perform in any way in front of your family, would you be amenable to taking Castiel home?”

Dean likes Pamela, he really does; she’s sharp and funny and he suspects, given the chance to know her outside of a therapy session, she’d be a hell of a great time.

That said, he really doesn’t like the way she uses her words.

“Yeah. Okay. I can — do that.” _Take Castiel home._

“Alright, and Castiel? Is that something you’d be interested in?”

“If Dean doesn’t mind. It’s that or nothing.”

Dean almost takes offense, almost withdraws his agreement, but Cas is wearing a bland, disinterested expression and looking at the wall, and the fight in him settles as quickly as it rose. Pamela just coaxed Dean into making the offer after he expressed a strong desire _not_ to do so; of course Cas has to play it this way. He must feel like a little kid whose teacher is forcing another kid to hang out with him.

“I don’t. It — it’ll be fun, probably. Always used to look forward to Thanksgiving with you,” he adds, the words like an olive branch, maybe, or even a denial that he’s angry.

Cas looks at him then, head tilted and eyes a little sad for a moment, before he nods, calm once more.

“Alright. Let’s do that, then.”

“Okay. Cool. I’ll, um, let Bobby and Ellen know you’re coming.”

“Thank you.”

When they leave therapy today, Pamela looks pleased with both of them.

"So, Cas! I hear you're finally joining us as Deano’s plus one, this year."

“Don’t call me that,” Dean mutters, glaring at his beer.

“Mom’s really lookin’ forward to havin’ you again,” she continues, smiling and giving Cas’s hand a squeeze. “Me, too. Well, and Bobby, of course.”

“Oh, I’m, uh, glad. I didn’t want to impose.”

“You? Impose? I don’t think you could.” She looks genuinely surprised. “You’re welcome there, whether you’ve got Sam and Dean with you or not. You know that, right?”

The look on Cas’s face says that no, he didn’t know that, and also that he still doubts it to be true.

Dean swallows. Not his fault, he tells himself. This is just how Cas is; he had to bend over backwards to get Cas to come to Thanksgiving dinner the first time, because it was like Cas just couldn’t believe that if his own family didn’t want him, how could anybody else?

(Dean thinks of his own first Thanksgiving with the Singer-Harvelles, and pointedly ignores the fact that he can kind of relate.)

“Thank you,” Cas finally mumbles, stilted.

She snaps her fingers.

“Right! Mom wanted me to ask if you wanted anything special for dinner?”

Dean frowns.

“Why didn’t she ask me to ask him?” Cas was _his_ fake-boyfriend, after all.

Jo gives him a weird look, almost as if she heard the thought, then smirks.

“Probably ‘cause she knew you’d just say ‘extra pie.’”

Well. She’s not wrong.

Beside him, Cas shrugs.

“I’ll be happy with whatever she wants to make,” he says, and Dean rolls his eyes.

“Dude, just tell Jo what you want.”

“I don’t-”

“Yams with cinnamon and marshmallows, Jojo. Pass it on.”

“Don’t fuckin’ call me that—"

“Don’t call me Deano,” he counters, and she glares.

“Hmph. And anyway, I thought you hated sweet yams, on principle, since they’re — how’d you say it? ‘Two streets over from pumpkin pie, which isn’t real pie?’”

“Yeah, but Cas is a big ol’ deviant, and he likes ‘em, and so long as you don’t put it next to my goddamn pie, I think I can handle it. Oh, and leave some of the marshmallows aside for him to snack on later.”

“Huh.” She gives him an appraising look. “He tellin’ the truth, Cas? You want that?”

“Uh. I don’t want to put Ellen out—” Cas starts, giving Dean a kind of alarmed stare.

“Nah, Mom’ll be happy to do it, or she wouldn’t have asked. I’ll let her know.”

“Thank you,” he tells Jo, but his eyes flicker back to Dean, who hides a smug smile in a manly gulp of beer.

Cas is weird the next few days. He’s quiet at home, which Dean chalks up to the extra work he’s putting in so he can take the time off, but it’s not the focused kind of quiet Dean’s used to; no, sometimes Dean’ll surreptitiously watch him while he fusses around the kitchen, and Cas will be staring into the distance, frowning, like he’s lost in unpleasant thoughts. Things have been good for a while, so Dean’s startled when Cas snaps at him a few times over nothing. By Monday night, the tension is manifesting in his body, and he’s gone for a rare evening run twice.

Then he’s quiet during therapy, which is, for the most part, a check-in session; but when Pamela casually asks if they’re looking forward to their little holiday, Cas starts fidgeting like mad, and barely manages to get out a bland few words of assent when Dean expresses tentative enthusiasm.

It all makes Dean a little paranoid, enough that he’s feeling hypersensitive to Cas’s moods, so on Tuesday, when Dean has to tell him for the third time to step away from the manuscript and just come _eat,_ for God’s sake, and Cas snaps that he’s starting to understand how _fortunate_ he was that the mother he had _ignored_ him, Dean loses it.

“What the _fuck_ is your problem, man?” he demands, advancing toward Cas’s chair. Cas looks away, glowering at the floor. “Seriously, I fuckin’ breathe wrong and you have a goddamn tantrum. If you’re gonna be like this all week, maybe you should stay home.”

At that, Cas pales, the anger bleeding out of his eyes as he gives Dean a lost look.

“I-” he starts, and Dean waits, his own fury dying a little, because he just wants to _know_ what’s going on with Cas, because he’s tired of not knowing and therefore also not knowing what to _expect,_ and therefore having to be afraid of the worst case scenario springing into action at any moment.

But Cas doesn’t finish, just gets up and walks out, and Dean puts both their dinners in the fridge.

He shouldn’t have said anything.

In fact, he shouldn’t have bothered waiting for Cas in the first place.

When Cas comes home two hours later, Dean knows he should probably stay put, dicking around on the laptop in bed, but he can’t help himself; within sixty seconds of hearing the front door shut, he’s closed the laptop and started down the hall to see where they’re at.

It’s not what he’s expecting.

Cas is rummaging through the fridge, humming — fucking _humming —_ and when Dean shuffles to a halt at the breakfast bar, he looks up with a smile.

“Oh,” he says brightly. “Hello, Dean.”

Something cold and uneasy slides down his throat and settles in his stomach. He swallows against it.

“Hey, Cas. Tupperware on the top shelf if you’re lookin’ for dinner, bottom left drawer if you want the string cheese.”

Cas pouts, tapping a finger against his chin.

“Can I have both?”

“Don’t ask me, I’m not your mother,” Dean retorts, not thinking, and flinches; but Cas just hums again, reaching for the tupperware, and Dean can’t keep the question back because he has to know. “That pot, or booze?”

 _Or something else_?

He can feel his heart in his chest, his blood in his ears, and Cas is quiet for a second, seriously considering the two types of string cheese before putting the plain one back.

Then he laughs.

“What’s it to you?” he asks, casting a sidelong glance at Dean, and Dean tries to shrug, tries to find it in himself to roll his eyes and wander back to the bedroom, but he can’t even muster a sigh because his body is holding its breath, because when it comes to this, Dean _can’t_ just brush it aside or let it go.

He watches Cas carefully, and though Cas is busy wrestling the lid off the snapware, he must sense Dean’s eyes on him.

“Relax,” he sighs. “It’s just a little weed. I needed to calm down, as you so _helpfully_ pointed out.”

He tempers the snark with a wink over his shoulder, then stuffs the leftovers in the microwave. Numbly, Dean thinks it’s impressive that he’s going to bother reheating it.

He wants to be relieved, knows he should be — but he still has that feeling, like there was a near-miss, like he came this close to something terrible, and his bones are still rattling from the anticipation of what could have been.

After a moment, he shakes himself from his stupor and walks forward, nudging Cas aside.

“That is not how you reheat leftovers, dumbass,” he says, reproachful, and adjusts the power level down and the timer up. Cas shrugs.

“Honestly, Dean, I don’t think I’ll be able to tell the difference.”

 _Could you at least_ try _to take care of yourself_? he almost snaps, but he holds his tongue, because despite Cas’s words, there’s no bite to his tone. He still has that bright, content look, and Dean’s been high enough times to know it’s just plain _mean_ to harsh a stoner’s mellow.

He waits until the food is properly reheated before he decides it’s time to leave Cas be and get his packing done.

“Alright, buddy, come get me when you know where you are so we can get our stuff ready for tomorrow, okay?”

Cas rolls his eyes.

“I’m not _that_ high. I could pack after I eat.”

“Really?” Dean counters, skeptical, and Cas hesitates.

“Well.” He sighs, running a hand through his hair. “No, I should wait. I have to pack carefully.”

Dean almost asks, _why_? Because it’ll just be Bobby and Ellen and Jo — and Dean, of course — and they’ll be staying at the house, so honestly, Cas could probably get away with stuffing a few pairs of clean pajamas and boxers in there and calling it a day.

But even though Cas is happy, and he really isn’t that high, Dean still doesn’t like him like this — still feels strange and unpleasant — so he doesn’t.

He doesn’t say anything at all, and by the time Cas comes into pack, Dean’s already fallen asleep.

Dean is unaccountably nervous by the time they get to Bobby and Ellen’s house.

The trip is short, and he and Cas don’t even fight; in fact, Cas seems to be much nearer to equilibrium than he’s been in days. Beyond not griping about how Dean takes corners or changes lanes or plays his music too loud, he actually sings along with some of the songs, matching Dean for volume as they belt it out to the open road, and Dean kinda feels like they’re sixteen-year-old kids again

But they get there in one piece, with zero blowups or mishaps, and Dean watches with that awkward, shaky feeling as Ellen draws Cas into a big, tight hug — then swats the back of his head and demands to know what took him so long.

Dean flushes, even though he’ll maintain that it’s got nothing to do with him, but Cas just tilts his head.

“Dean drove pretty recklessly,” he informs her, matter-of-fact and puzzled. “I thought we were early.”

Ellen just frowns at Dean — at Dean! — like this is somehow his fault. He just shrugs, biting his tongue and giving her a wide-eyed, innocent look, and after a harrowing stare-down, she looks back to Cas with a sigh.

“Alright, get in the house.” She waves them along, up onto the porch. “Heard you boys were bunkin’ down together back home, so I figured the two o’you could just share the downstairs guest room instead of anybody havin’ to make up the sofa.”

“Sounds good,” Dean responds cheerily, and tries not to let his disappointment show.

See, he can understand how she drew that conclusion, because Dean really has — at least 99%, anyway — gotten used to sleeping with Cas.

(Sleeping in the same bed as Cas, that is.)

But what she didn’t factor in was the fact that sometimes Sam and Valencia don’t knock (Sam, because he’s sometimes too focused and full of mission goo to remember his fucking manners, and Valencia, because — because she has a sixth sense for when something sordid or interesting is happening behind a door and she likes to stir the pot? Dean doesn’t even know) and he hasn’t exactly mentioned the part where most mornings he wakes up to Cas wrapped around him, face buried in Dean’s chest or neck or even, occasionally, his armpit.

He supposes he’ll just have to wake up early.

Dean hauls their suitcases in, getting halfway to the room before he thinks to wonder _why_ he’s carrying both their bags while Ellen and Cas walk ahead of him, empty-handed, catching up. (Or sort-of catching up; Ellen is mostly asking questions and demanding answers, which Cas hesitantly provides.)

But if he’s being honest, feeling like an embittered pack mule is a nice distraction from feeling unfairly guilty over the fact that there’s any catching up for them to do in the first place. How could he have known that not inviting Cas to come home with him would mean Cas suddenly stopped talking to his family? It’s not like the guy doesn’t own a phone.

And yeah, maybe Ellen hassled Dean about it a few times or twenty and Dean made various noises about ‘the dude’s busy, I dunno,’ at which she did that frowny thing she does, but — but he’s not Cas’s keeper. It wasn’t his job.

“Well, then. You two get settled in and come get some dinner, alright? We’re eatin’ light on account of tomorrow, but it oughta do.” She raps her knuckle against the door. “After that, you can help me get things ready.”

They’re both okay with getting impressed into kitchen duty, actually; Dean, because it means working with pie, and Cas, because evidently, he becomes a paragon of cooperation and malleability as soon as Dean’s not involved.

(That’s not true, really; Cas is a difficult little shit with everyone, in his crafty, subtle way — unless he actually _likes_ them. Which . . . Dean’s not sure what to make of that, but he tries to remember that he and Cas have always been each other’s weird exception and he _probably_ doesn’t need to take it personally.)

So they eat, and wash the dinner dishes, and then Dean cuts butter into dough while Cas dutifully follows Ellen’s affectionately terse orders and Jo gets away with doing impressively little, but hangs out in the kitchen anyway, getting underfoot and stealing bits of food. Bobby, for his part, quietly peels potatoes, throwing the occasional glance around at all of them and shaking his head.

Dean excuses himself around seven to retrieve Sam and Val from the airport, and for some reason, Cas follows him out of the kitchen. He hovers while Dean shrugs into his jacket, looking like he wants to say something, so Dean waits.

And waits.

“Something you want?” he finally asks, and Cas’s eyes fly to his, startled.

“Uh. No. Sorry.”

“Okay. Well. I’m gonna head out, then,” Dean says slowly. Cas nods, looking down briefly.

“Alright. Drive safe,” he adds softly, and then seems content to stand there and watch Dean leave rather than wander back to the kitchen, so after a minute, Dean waves awkwardly and lets himself out of the house.

He’s been driving for twenty minutes before he realizes he could have asked Cas to come with him, and after another ten, he’s still not sure why it matters.

“So . . . how’s, um, how’s married life?” Sam asks, once their luggage is safely stowed in the trunk and Valencia is for some reason sitting shotgun despite the fact that Sam has, like, eight inches on her.

Dean throws a catty look back at him.

“Dunno, Sammy, how is it?”

Sam just rolls his eyes.

“Dean, we could go down to the courthouse tomorrow and we’d still never be as married as you and Cas sounded the other night.”

Dean grips the steering wheel, wants to tell Sam, in detail, how much he disagrees — but Valencia is a big-eyed, skittish woodland creature when it comes to the whole commitment deal and Sam doesn’t _not_ sometimes get insecure and read more into that than is there, so he figures he’d better let the subject drop.

“Whatever. It’s fine, same as always.”

Sam opens his mouth, but Valencia beats him to the punch.

“See, Sam?” she interjects pleasantly. “’Same as always,’ just like I told you it would be.”

Dean is _super_ not okay with the loud snort that comes from the back seat, or with whatever it implies, but he can think of nothing to say that won’t just have them exchanging amused smiles at his expense.

“So where is Cas, anyway? You guys have a fight or something?”

Dean throws an annoyed glance in the rearview mirror, his irritation certainly having nothing to do with the fact that he’d spent half the drive to the airport noticing Cas’s absence, too.

“Uh, no. S’not like we’re attached at the hip or anything. He probably had enough of bein’ in a car with me for one day,” Dean adds, though he thinks if he’d _asked_ , Cas might be riding shotgun this very moment, allowing Dean to make lewd and inappropriate jokes about Sam and Valencia in the backseat.

There’s silence for a moment, and Dean is just beginning to relax into it when Sam decides he just can’t help himself.

“Well, did you ask him?”

Dean sighs.

It’s going to be a long weekend.

Jo is snuggled up between Bobby and Ellen on the sofa, watching TV, when they get back, but there’s no sign of Cas.

Once they’ve herded Sam and Valencia to collapse, exhausted, into the upstairs guest bed, Dean asks about it. Ellen gives him a sharp, calculating look.

“Boy said he wanted to go up in your old treehouse. I think it’s too cold for that, personally, but I reckon he was feelin’ a little overwhelmed. You oughta go check on ‘im, though.”

Dean intends to do exactly that.

“You made him put on a coat, right?”

Ellen just gives him a look, and he grins sheepishly.

“Alright, thanks.”

“Uh-huh,” she drawls, and Dean tries not to read too much into it.

It’s dark out, but Cas must have the battery-operated lantern with him, because warm light spills from the treehouse windows into the yard, lighting Dean’s path as he approaches. He pauses a few feet away, taking a moment to look up at the unremarkable structure he’d spent countless hours in as a kid.

See, by the time Dean graduated high school, he was doing pretty good; but the nine-year-old kid that came to Bobby and Ellen’s house for his first extended stay (probably at Bobby’s insistence, he now realizes) was . . . troubled. He didn’t get why his Dad was leaving him and Sammy behind for a whole summer, didn’t understand what was so good about a house in one place — and honestly, he gave Ellen and Bobby more than their fair share of grief about it.

But they didn’t call John and demand he come collect his rude brat of a son; nah, they figured it was perfectly normal for Dean to have a hard time adjusting, and decided he was probably feeling a little claustrophobic, a little closed-in and cut off. Their solution, then, was to give him a space of his own.

Dean remembers watching sullenly from his and Sam’s room as Bobby hauled the wood pieces into the yard, started sawing things and nailing them together. After a few days of this, he finally broke in his resolve and wandered out to ask about it. He just sat and watched from the yard for a couple more days, but after that, he asked to help, and Bobby showed him, and soon enough, Dean had that space, just like they’d planned.

He doesn’t think he’s ever managed to properly express his gratitude for that, didn’t understand, even, how vital and important to him it had been at the time. Even when Cas moved to town, and Dean’s space changed to implicitly mean ‘with room for Cas, as well’; and even later on, when Sam got old enough and Dean felt less cagey and generally secure enough to bring him up, too, to read comics and play gameboy and what-the-hell-ever; and finally, even when Dean was in high school and things were good and he’d cram Cas and Sam and Jo and Charlie or some other people, too, into the little space, it never stopped meaning something that it was there, and it was his, and if he really just wanted to be alone with his thoughts, with that restless, empty feeling he sometimes got — he could.

But that’s okay, because there probably aren’t words for that kind — that degree — of gratitude, and it’s also okay, because he likes to think they know.

Now, he climbs the ladder, struggling to ignore the feeling of deja vu, because the only person who was ever allowed up there when Dean _wasn’t,_ was Cas, and Dean remembers the little thrill that ran up his spine whenever he looked out his bedroom window and saw a light in the treehouse.

“Hello, Dean,” Cas says, just as Dean’s head passes through the opening. Dean blinks, quickly takes stock of the situation — and by situation he mostly means the smell — and sighs.

“Hey, there, Cas. How you doin’?”

“Good,” Cas murmurs, absentmindedly dragging his finger in circles across the floorboards as he smiles hazily at Dean.

“Yeah, you seem like you’re doin’ real good,” he returns gamely, and Cas’s smile widens.

“Yes. It’s — it’s nice. I’m enjoying myself very much, Dean,” he explains earnestly, “Because — it’s so _small._ And I’m big. But I’m in here anyway.”

Dean bites his lip, refuses to make the obvious joke.

“Wow, Cas. You’re high as a fuckin’ kite right now, aren’t you?”

Cas smirks, blue eyes suddenly bright with mischief.

“I don’t _need_ to be high to enjoy the simple things, Dean,” he retorts. “After all, even when I’m sober, I’m still friends with _you._ ”

Dean glowers at him, trying not to laugh. He doesn’t like it when Cas is high, but he can still appreciate it when it means Cas just gets happy and loopy like this, as long as he’s not already keyed up from some other drama they’ve got going on.

“That wasn’t a no,” he points out.

“No, it wasn’t,” Cas agrees, sighing. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to embarrass you, or myself, but I was feeling so-” he catches himself, stopping. “Anyway, I’m not doing it in the house. If you don’t tell everybody, it should be okay.”

And Dean pauses, puzzles over that, because there’s something important somewhere in all of it — and then, finally, he gets it.

Nervous. Cas is nervous — has _been_ nervous, for days. Dean doesn’t know why, because he used to practically live here when Dean did, and after that, he came back frequently enough. But he is, Dean’s sure of it, and he suddenly feels like an ass for not providing reassurance where it was needed.

He swallows down the sudden guilt.

“Alright, Alice,” he manages. “Bedtime.”

Cas’s lips quirk, and he wriggles away.

“Dude,” Dean complains. “C’mon, I’m gettin’ cold.”

“It’s a shame I’m big instead of small,” Cas muses, apparently not caring about Dean’s temperature woes, “Or else I could make you carry me.”

Dean postures a little at that.

“You think I can’t carry you?” he demands, but Cas just throws him an impatient look.

“Out of a treehouse? No, nor would I let you try.”

“Okay, but I could carry you the rest of the way once we’re out,” he reasons, and Cas just looks amused.

“Really. After that lengthy phone conversation last week explaining, clearly and repeatedly, that you and I were not really dating, you’re going to literally sweep me off my feet and carry me over the threshold of our bedchamber?”

Either Cas is sobering fast, or he wasn’t as high as Dean thought, to begin with.

But Dean’s not one to back down from a challenge.

“Hey, I didn’t say _how_ I would carry you.”

In response to that, Cas just rolls his eyes — but then they settle back on Dean, and he just _smiles_ at him, and suddenly Dean’s throat feels thick with something unnamed, but familiar.

And sure, it’s been a while, but he still knows it. It’s like that time when they were ten and somebody made fun of Dean for hanging out with Cas, so Dean told them to fuck off and straight-up punched them. He got in _huge_ trouble, was grounded for what felt like eons, but he’d still insisted they deserved it, ‘cause _nobody_ talked about Cas that way.

And Cas — Cas had just smiled at him, eyes all warm and twinkly, just like he’s doing now.

Dean turns away, not knowing what his face is doing and not wanting to have to see Cas’s response and find out.

“I’m not comin’ back out here for you if your stoned brain decides it wants to sleep here, alright?”

Cas makes some noise behind him, and Dean descends the ladder, hoping that means Cas will follow.

A few seconds later, the tell-tale creak of wood sounds, and Cas does.

Dean’s up at six the next morning — a time he assumed to be an overly-safe estimate, but finds was barely safe enough. Not three minutes have passed since Dean disentangled himself from Cas’s sleeping body when Sam quietly cracks the door and nearly gives Dean a heart attack.

“ _Jesus,_ ” he hisses, and Sam gives him a surprised, but pleased look.

“Oh, hey, you’re up! Do you want to come running?”

Dean frowns heavily, ready to point out, in the most offensive way he can manage, what a _fucking ridiculous_ notion that is — but actually, now that he’s all wide-awake and feeling jumpy, it doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world (for once).

“Yeah, okay. I’ll be right out.”

Sam grins, leaving him to throw on sweats, and a few minutes later they head for the door.

“No Val?” Dean asks. Sam smiles, wry.

“She’s been up for an hour, already, but when I asked her, she just went “That’s nice, dear,” and didn’t look at me.”

Dean snorts, and Sam arches a brow.

“What about you? No Cas?”

“ _God,_ no. Even if I _could_ get him up at this hour, I value my life, Sam.”

“Huh.”

As they descend the front steps, Sam coughs, and it sounds suspiciously like the word ‘married.’

All-in-all, Thanksgiving is better than it has been in years, and Dean resolutely decides not to try and figure out why.

They all spend the morning watching TV and playing around in the yard, and then they move to the kitchen, where they distract Ellen until she tells them to stop being ‘a damn nuisance’ and kicks them out.

By the time she summons them back in to help set the table and ferry the food-laden serveware to it, they’re starving. Of course they are; they haven’t eaten all day.

Which is why Dean is baffled and distressed when he keeps glancing over to find Cas picking at one of the most sparsely populated dinner plates he’s ever seen. He makes quick enough work of it, still, and when he sits there for a full minute afterward, making no indication he’s going to get more, Dean remembers about Cas being all nervous; honestly, Cas is so blunt and assertive and _practical,_ Dean sometimes forgets that he’s also kind of _shy_.

In any case, he’ll have to take matters into his own hands.

He swallows the last of his enormous bite, sets down his fork, and seizes Cas’s plate; Cas looks up at him, startled, but Dean just waves a hand and methodically loads the plate with a little bit of everything (although he reserves about a quarter of the space for the marshmallow yams.) Satisfied when his arm begins to strain a little beneath its weight, he slides it back in front of Cas.

“Eat,” he commands, and hesitantly, Cas does.

Dean rolls his eyes, elbowing him, hard.

“Like you _mean_ it.”

Cas narrows his eyes at him, but settles into a much-more-natural rhythm, and Dean returns his attention to the conversation, ignoring the weirdly unhappy look Ellen gives him.

The food trials aren’t over, though.

Once the table is cleared of the dinner dishes, Ellen enlists Sam and Valencia to help bring out dessert. Cas declines, but follows the ongoing conversation with interest, and Dean piles three kinds of pie and two cookies onto his plate, getting halfway through one slice before he notices Cas eyeing it.

“You want me to fix you a plate?” he asks generously, but Cas quickly shakes his head.

“No, I’m full.”

The longing stare at Dean’s dessert doesn’t stop though, and Dean’s just launched into a story about some asshat that came into the garage when he loses patience and just starts holding out tidy forkfuls of dessert from his own plate, for Cas to nibble on while he maintains that he’s too stuffed to eat.

(Cas gives him a look, but he eats them. Across from them, Ellen’s scowling at Dean and Sam looks like he’s _dying_ to say something, but you know what? Dean just doesn’t wanna know.)

He gets into it, setting the fork down so he has both hands to gesture when he gets to the part about the engine, but he apparently he takes too long, because Cas reaches over to retrieve the fork on his own; and when Dean glances sideways at the movement, he notices Cas’s full water glass, and promptly smacks his hand, cutting off mid-sentence.

“Dude, drink some water first. You gotta hydrate if you’re gonna eat this much.”

Cas huffs, cheeks reddening a little as he glances around the table.

“I’m not a child,” he mutters, and Dean snorts.

“Then stop acting like one, you big baby. Now, what was I saying? Oh, yeah — so, like, I’ve got the hood up, and I’ve already told the guy like, _four times,_ we'll come find you in the waiting room when we know something, but he comes over and he starts asking . . .”

In the end, Dean’s pretty sure Cas eats more than half his dessert.

Despite his best efforts, Dean did notice Ellen giving him the stink-eye all evening, and she finally corners him at cleanup, coming to stand by Dean at the sink and shooing Jo out the door with some spiked hot cocoa for everybody lounging in the family room.

“Honey, what are you doing?” she asks, once they’re alone.

“Uh, washing dishes?” he answers, genuinely confused. Just because he knows she’s got a problem with him doesn’t mean he can even begin to guess what it is.

“No.” She gives him a hard stare, unimpressed. “What are you doing with Cas?”

“. . . Trying to win a bet?” Like, seriously? Where is she going with this?

“Uh-huh. And for what, again?”

“What do you mean? To make Cas eat his words, obviously.” He explained all of this last week, he thought.

“And there’s nothin’ else in it for you? Besides that?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“You know, Dean, I don’t know. You tell me. _Is_ doin’ somethin’ just to make your best friend feel bad really ‘enough’? Is it worth all — this?”

Uh. Well, when you put it like _that_. . .

“Shit, Ellen, it’s harmless. And it’s only for a couple more months, anyway,” he mumbles defensively, scrubbing at a plate.

She looks at him.

“Dean. Do you know what I mean when I talk about makin’ him feel bad?”

“Yeah? He’s probably not gonna feel too great once he knows for sure he can’t hack it in a relationship.”

But Ellen just gives him a sad look.

“What?” he asks, frustrated, because Ellen’s the only mother he’s ever known, and he can practically feel her disappointment in the air, but he doesn’t get why it’s there.

“Just think about it, Dean. Don’t hurt him any more than you already have.”

Dean just stares, speechless, because — what? What the hell does that mean?

Unfortunately, his hands go still, too, and suddenly Ellen reaches over to hit the tap.

“Don’t let the water run,” she snaps, and he nods dumbly. “Alright. Well, come join us when you’re done with those.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

And then she’s gone, but there are still dishes, and worse than that, there’s still all the confused little thoughts skittering around in his head.

They’re in bed, hours later, when Dean’s conscience, guilty despite the fact that it’s still not sure what it should feel guilty for, catches up with him.

He looks over at Cas, faintly visible in the moonlight, blue eyes open and staring at the ceiling. Carefully, Dean turns on his side to face him.

“Hey,” he says, and Cas blinks, turning his head in surprise.

“Hello.” He shifts, mirroring Dean,

“How d’you feel?” he asks, not sure how he means that, or even how he expects Cas to answer.

Cas looks back at him, quiet for such a long moment that Dean thinks maybe he confused Cas, too.

And then Cas surprises him.

“Like I’m home,” he whispers.

For a small, inconspicuous eternity, they stare at each other, and the air in Dean’s lungs overstays its usual welcome, caught.

But then his brain catches up, and he lets it out, and he smiles, easy as you please.

“Yeah. Yeah, me, too. Bobby and Ellen are great; I love comin’ back here.”

Cas is quiet, then gives a small nod.

“They are,” he agrees, and nothing more is said.

Instead, it all just hovers in the air around them, ambiguous and strange and impossible for Dean to decipher, and it’s a long time after Cas’s breathing evens out before he finally falls asleep.

The weekend passes without incident, though Dean is hyper-aware of Ellen’s scrutiny and Sam and Valencia just looking at each other sometimes, and not in the obnoxious eye-fucky way, but in that way where Dean is sure they’re silently discussing him. Aside from that, everybody has a great time, and Dean’s sorry to leave on Sunday morning.

He’s happy to find that the relaxed, pleasant mood follows them home, and though Cas is a little quiet during therapy, like he always is when they don’t have anything to fight about, he seems — happier. Dean’s not sure, and maybe it’s his imagination, but for the entire week, things are — really, _really_ good. He swears Cas laughs more, and even instigates a few casual conversations with Dean, and on Thursday night he unpacks Dean’s duffel and does all the laundry because, “You seemed busy.”

He was playing a game with _Charlie._

So, you know; competition or not, there’s really no reason not to reward good behavior, and it’s that train of thought that has Dean booking them a date to play paintball. Dean figures it’ll be a great time; he and Cas are both a little competitive — you know, just a little — and Cas likes shit that engages his brain, and they’ve been getting along better than they have in _years,_ so it follows that this should be their best date yet, right?

It is and isn’t.

It is, because paintball is fuckin’ _fun,_ and they spend hours there, totally into it and getting increasingly aggressive in their tactics. Even as opponents, their styles somehow mesh well together, and Dean doesn’t think he’s ever had a better session.

But it also _isn’t,_ because they do get increasingly aggressive in their tactics, and when Dean accidentally gives himself away sneaking up behind Cas in the last round, he has no choice but to throw himself forward to push Cas’s arm up so he doesn’t get shot. That, of course, means he careens straight into him, and they both go down in a tangled pile of limbs.

Unfortunately, they _are_ both competitive, so in a situation where they’d normally follow bro code and separate as quickly as humanly possible, they’re both a little more focused on trying to both get their gun at shooting angle and prevent the other person from doing the same. A strange, intense wrestling match ensues, and Dean goes from kick-the-bastard’s-ass mode to uh-what’s-rubbing-up-against-my-ass mode and in that second’s pause, Cas shoves him, hard, and sends him sprawling on the ground.

“Truce,” he pants, not looking Dean in the eye.

“Yeah,” Dean answers hoarsely, and they awkwardly stand up and leave the field, giving each other a conspicuously wide berth until they make it to the car.

The drive home happens in dead silence, a bizarre charge coursing through the air between them, but Dean ignores it and makes a beeline for the shower as soon as they’re through the door.

Cas doesn’t even argue with him.

It’s fine, though, because after twenty minutes of determined rationalization as he washes his hair twice and wastes a shameful amount of water, he feels about fifty times more normal. So they got too — _vehement._ They do that sometimes, nothin’ out of the ordinary. And if Dean suddenly felt a little bit self-conscious when he realized they had some grinding action going, then you know, whatever. It’s been a while for him, and it was an awkward position, and actually, you know what? That whole weird silence on the car ride home was probably _all in his head._ In fact, Cas is probably doing his frowny head-tilt out there on the sofa, wondering why Dean was bein’ all weird.

Yeah. It’s fine. They’re fine. Everything is fine.

Except what’s not fine is that he forgot a goddamn _towel._

Dean peeks beyond the shower curtain, hoping Cas remembered to replace the towels after swiping the old ones for laundry last night, but no dice; he can’t even be that angry, since he never remembers, either.

He sighs, making a weird, tip-toey dash to the door before cracking it open.

“Cas! I need a towel!” he yells.

“Just a minute,” Cas calls back, and Dean waits. He can hear Cas in the living room, talking to someone on the phone, so he hops back in the shower and tugs the curtain shut to preserve his warmth.

Naturally, after two minutes have passed, Dean left to stand in the tub, cold and dripping through all of it, he gets impatient.

He gets _so_ impatient, he decides that fuck Cas’s newfound modesty thing, he’s gonna get himself a damn towel.

He strolls out of the bathroom, stark naked, just as Cas turns into the hall, phone still pressed to his ear.

They both freeze, staring at each other.

And then Cas lets out a squeak and five seconds later the front door slams behind him.

Dean, surprisingly embarrassed that Cas got an eyeful, rolls his eyes and yells after him:

“It’s a _phone,_ Cas! It’s not like they could see me through it!”

Five minutes later, Cas still hasn’t come back in, and Dean huddles in his flannel pajama pants and bulky sweatshirt, not sulking.

While he’s not sulking, however, he nonetheless finds himself left alone to his thoughts, thoughts which include the miserable supposition that Cas _saw him naked,_ and as soon as he’d found privacy for his phone call, probably thought back and dispassionately judged him.

Because Cas is probably way fitter than Dean, he thinks, on account of all the running he does. And Dean goes to the gym a few times a week, and it’s not like he never uses the treadmill after he lifts, but still; he’s never been as lean as Cas, never managed to get rid of that slight softness about the middle that Cas has never had in his life.

Of course, Dean doesn’t know for sure how fit Cas is, because the only time in recent years that he’s gotten a halfway decent look was during the Metallica-Shirt-Incident (which he catches himself dwelling on now, trying to conjure the image of Cas in the dim lamplight and determine how much of the sharp contours of his hips were just flattering shadows — god _damn_ it, brain); despite living together the past several months, Cas stays scrupulously covered up.

Dean teased him about it once, getting fed up with how long whatever rituals Cas was performing in the bathroom were taking and barging in to commandeer the toilet. Cas had had a huge bitch fit, in response to which Dean pointed out, “You’ve fucked half the state, how are you such a prude?”

But Cas just turned red and told him to get out, clutching his towel around him like Dean was about to lunge forward and tear it away.

Which is probably not the best metaphor to be picturing, now that Dean thinks about it, so he decides to just not think about it, a policy which has served him well on countless occasions.

Fortunately, he hears the front door creak open, and he bolts upright, not that he really has a plan of action in mind. Not that he _needs_ a plan of action. It wasn’t a big deal.

Obviously.

Which is why he tentatively creeps down the hall and into the living room, where Cas nods at him in acknowledgment, but pointedly doesn’t look away from the mail as he painstakingly examines it.

“I’m dressed,” he huffs, awkwardly stuffing his hands in his pockets. “And I wouldn’t have had to — you know — if you hadn’t taken so long.”

Cas purses his lips, finally meeting Dean’s eyes.

“It’s fine. Just, in future,” he continues stiffly, “Please refrain from wandering about the house naked.”

Like Dean’s a repeat offender, flashing his bits and pieces while he grills burgers and dusts the bookshelves. This was the _first_ goddamn time.

“Seriously? Dude, we’re both _guys._ Hell, we used to strip down together in the locker room on the daily.” He barely manages not to wince at how that sounds, and fortunately, Cas doesn’t seem to notice. “It’s nothin’ you haven’t seen before — or are interested in seeing.”

Cas looks down.

“Well — exactly,” he argues. “I don’t want to see that.”

Dean ignores the stab of — hurt? — because _ouch,_ even though he’d probably say the same thing to any of his guy friends and not mean they were ugly or anything. The way Cas says it though, without exaggeration or humor, makes it sound like he’s . . . genuinely repulsed.

“Well, good, ‘cause I didn’t mean to show it to you. I promise not to flash you again, alright? We good here?”

Cas sighs.

“Yes, Dean. We’re good.”

“Alright.”

He swallows, suddenly wishing desperately for a way to retrieve the easy atmosphere of the past week — and then he smirks.

“But I should probably still buy you dinner,” he says, reaching over to grab the sheet of pizza coupons from the mail stack in Cas’s hand.

He gives Dean a considering look, and Dean holds his breath until — there. A small smile, the humor creeping back into Cas’s gaze.

“Alright. But I want the spinach one.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Dean grumbles, relief saturating his bones. “Last time I show anybody my junk, I swear to God.”

“That’s the idea,” Cas murmurs, and Dean has to turn around to hide his grin.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: past drug overdose (see end notes for details), past Dean/Aaron (flashbacks), let me know if I forgot anything.
> 
> Thank you. ♡

A thing Cas has started doing again is staring.

Like, it’s not that Cas ever really _stopped._ Dean still sometimes feels Cas’s eyes on him, only to look and find him engrossed in something else, like some phantom sensation he wants to think is real. And fine, most of those times, Dean’s probably imagining it, but he thinks at least occasionally, Cas does stare — he’s just finally learned it’s bad to get caught at it.

Now, though — it’s like somebody reset something in his brain, because lately, Dean’ll look up and catch Cas just watching him, for no reason he can think of. It’s as disconcerting as it ever was, maybe even _because_ Cas hasn’t done it as much the last few years; part of Dean kind of assumed that whatever it was that made him so interesting to Cas when they were kids, Cas must have got bored of or maybe even finally figured out.

At any rate, he’s unsettled every time he looks up and unexpectedly meets a pair of bright blue eyes, and Cas doesn’t even have the decency to look away.

So, maybe Dean looks back. And maybe, even though it makes him uncomfortable, a part of him kind of likes it. A part of him — a really fucked up, confused part of him — kind of feels _worth_ more because of it, and if Pamela were his own, personal therapist and he actually knew how to put his shit into words, he might try and talk to her about that.

He doesn’t, though; he just accepts this new, old part of their dynamic, and tries his best to relax and enjoy the fact that his life continues along with much less contention than it had previously.

So one night, Dean’s surreptitiously texting Katya about the latest episode of Dr. Sexy, when there’s a lull in conversation while he waits for her to feed her cats, and he looks up to find—

Yeah, Cas is doing it again.

He tilts his head, totally unabashed.

“You look happy,” he states, curious.

Dean colors a little, fighting not to break eye contact.

He hasn’t really told Cas about his new friendship with Katya, figures the fewer things that remind him of the low points, the better; and it is _just_ a friendship, regardless of its sordid beginning. Cas watches Dr. Sexy with Dean, and Charlie sort of keeps up, and they both put up with him talking about it to some degree, but it’s just not the same as having somebody to talk to who’s as _into_ it as he is. And Katya’s like an endless source of hilarious links, not to mention she’s already recommended two other shows that are totally awesome (how can you _not_ like Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries? Even Cas gives that his full attention), and Dean’s already put her in contact with Charlie for LARP reasons and decided to hope that by the time she and Cas cross paths again, he’ll have forgotten where he knows her from.

That said, it’s a lot less likely to happen that way if Dean confesses now. Which, again, there’s nothing to confess to, but it still feels — weird, somehow.

Cas waits, continuing to let his gaze rove freely over Dean’s face, and for some bizarre reason Dean finds himself blurting out the truth.

“Uh, Katya. You know. Dr. Sexy chick. We’re talkin’ about Wednesday’s episode.”

He tenses, waiting for Cas to get angry, to accuse him of breaking the no-hookups rule; and Cas’s gaze does shutter a little, his shoulders drawing up — but then they slump, and he nods slowly.

“Oh. You know. If you want,” he starts, words quiet and halting, “You can . . .”

But nothing follows.

“Can what?” Dean prompts, at a loss, and Cas bites his lip as he looks away.

“You can — even though we agreed—”

But then he looks at Dean again and seems to freeze.

“Cas?”

“Never mind,” he says in a rush, and stands. “I — I’m going to go for a run before dinner.”

And that’s it. Cas didn’t get angry — Dean has no idea _what_ he got — and also, it’s dinner time. Cool.

Of course, that’s not it; that’s not it at all. After thirty minutes have become forty-five, still without any sign of Cas, Dean recognizes the antsy, sick feeling in his gut for what it is:

Guilt.

Because no, Cas didn’t get mad, but _Dean still feels like he did something wrong._

And of course, there’s the telltale evening run, which suggests that however Cas felt about it, it wasn’t nothing.

So Dean, not one to sit around with his thumbs up his ass, decides this is probably not as big a deal as his stupid paranoid brain is trying to make it out to be, and puts himself to work.

And if that work means changing his original dinner plans to an elaborate lasagna, with peanut butter cookies for dessert, that’s just because he really wants to keep busy.

Which is also why, while the lasagna is in the oven, he forces himself to stop glancing at the front door and head to the spare room, where all the stuff they didn’t need for six months is still in boxes.

It takes him a few minutes, but he finds what he’s looking for; Cas’s vinyl collection. Somewhere in one of these boxes is Cas’s favorite Bowie album, and that’s exactly what’s gonna be playing when Cas comes back from his run, and he and Dean will be as solid as they ever are once again. Foolproof.

But it’s not in the first box, or the second box, and when Dean maneuvers the third box into range and pulls out the carton of records, he finds a section sticking up a couple inches further than the rest. Naturally curious, he pulls them out, peering into the box to figure out why.

There’s a little tin case underneath them.

Dean swallows, uncomprehending for a moment, before an ugly suspicion makes him go cold all over, and suddenly he knows, somewhere in the deepest depths of his core, what he’s going to find in that tin.

He opens it anyway.

“You both seem very tense,” Pamela remarks as they settle on the loveseat, far apart from one another.

Neither of them say anything.

“Okay. Well. Which one of you would like to tell me what happened this week?”

Dean shifts, glaring down at the cushion beneath him, and beside him, Cas sighs.

They still don’t say a word.

“Alright, then. We can just sit quietly, then,” she says, and promptly begins scribbling on her notepad.

Dean can only listen to the scritch-scratch of the pen for so long before he caves.

“We had — a fight.”

Cas snorts.

“Oh, really? Did we, Dean? Because I don’t remember a fight, I just remember you completely losing your shit and _yelling_ at me _all weekend._ ”

“Yeah, well, you deserved it,” Dean shoots back, utterly unapologetic, because it’s a new week now and damn if he’s not perfectly okay with spending it yelling at Cas, too, if that’s what it takes.

“You had no _right,_ ” Cas snaps, and _fuck_ that, Dean had _every_ right, and even if he didn’t it, he’d fucking take it.

“Well, excuse me if I don’t wanna watch you nearly die a second time! Or, god forbid, actually do it this time!”

Cas lets out a noise of frustration.

“I’m not _going_ to, I fucking _told_ you, that’s old, I forgot it was there! So just — stop getting on my case, Dean! I’m not your goddamn responsibility!”

Dean has to laugh at that.

“Yeah? You are when you can’t be responsible for yourself!”

“You’re getting mad at me over _nothing!_ ”

“Well, _maybe_ I’m still mad over when it _was_ something, did you ever think of that?”

Cas freezes, and they stare at each other for a minute, breathing ragged and audible in the quiet.

Then his face turns hard.

“Well, _Dean,_ maybe you aren’t the only one.”

“What the hell does _that_ mean?” he demands, suddenly feeling like a loose thread that just got yanked on, hard, but Cas just crosses his arms and turns a sullen stare to the floor.

Probably a full minute goes by before Pamela clears her throat, and Dean would be lying if he said he hadn’t forgotten she was there.

“Would one of you like to give me some background, here?” she asks, slow and careful, and Dean rolls his eyes, swallowing down the wave of hysteria such an innocuous request prompts.

And since Cas is determined to sulk, tight-lipped, in his corner of the sofa, Dean figures it’s on him to answer.

“After college, this asshole partied too hard and fuckin’ OD’d. I got a call from the hospital, at _two in the morning,_ telling me-” he cuts off, because — he just — no. “Why was I even your emergency contact, Cas?” he asks, pinching the bridge of his nose and hating the way his voice comes out thick. “You should’ve put your sister.”

And apparently Cas is ready to talk now, because he has an answer to that.

“She lives in Europe, Dean. You — you were all I had.”

And there’s quiet accusation in there, enough that Dean can’t _not_ notice it, and he’s just starting to wonder if he’s missing something here when Pamela encourages them to go on.

“So what happened?” she asks, and Cas shrugs, falls silent again.

“There’s not much else to say. Cas lived, said he quit doing it-”

“And I _did,_ ” he insists, a hint of desperation warping the words, but Dean just talks right over it.

“But I found one of his fucking kits last week, and if he thinks I’m going through that again, he’s got another thing coming.”

“God, Dean, how many times do I have tell you—”

“You don’t, because I won’t believe you.” Because he can’t. Because once your worst fucking nightmare wraps its cold, vise-like hand around your throat, you never quite feel done choking.

“Oh, fuck off, Dean. You know, it’s amazing to me how _self-righteous_ you get over this, while we all just politely ignore your inherited alcoholism. Because it’s not like _that_ ever killed anybody,” he adds sarcastically, and Dean’s hands tighten into fists.

“Don’t talk about my Dad.”

“Why not?” Cas throws him a vicious smile. “I’m pretty sure you _don’t talk about him_ enough for all of us.”

“Uh,” Pamela says, eyes bouncing between them, but Dean is just so done with Cas’s bullshit, can’t even fathom how he’s managed not only to not flat out smother Cas in his sleep, but to actually delude himself into thinking they were getting _along._

“First of all, fuck you. Second of all, really? I'm not a fucking alcoholic. In fact, you might have noticed me barely drinking at all for these past several months—” he pauses deliberately “—because I can be a reliable boyfriend. Unlike you, who’s such a fucking mess that even if you do talk someone into trying a relationship with you, they’ll never be able to trust you. And I’m not talkin’ about cheating.”

Cas gapes at him.

Ten seconds later, Pamela’s office door slams.

So Pamela launches into a _blistering_ lecture after Cas is gone, barely giving Dean time to catch his breath.

And whatever wounded beast was apparently fueling his speech while Cas was in the room completely retreats back to whatever eerie brain-forest it crawled out of, because Dean just takes it in silence.

Not that he’s not thinking plenty, because he is. And he wants to defend himself, say that Cas — what Cas had done — had scared him witless. That getting that call had emptied every warm and safe feeling out of his soul until all that was left was fear and dread and guilt and anger.

Because Dean remembers getting that call like it was yesterday, like it was five minutes ago, like it’s gonna be tomorrow and forever after that. Sometimes, something makes him think of it, and just like that, he’s back in this place, and an irrational part of him is scared that years from now, when he’s old and decrepit and losing his mind, he’s not gonna know his own name — but he’ll remember that call.

And it _was_ awful, because Dean — Dean was asleep in bed with Aaron when his phone woke him up, and he almost didn’t get it. But he did, and he felt just — sick to his stomach, because he’d probably been _fucking_ somebody while Cas was out there _dying —_ would have _actually_ died if nobody had found him.

And he knew he shouldn’t have thought of it like that, that that made it sound like Aaron was just some random somebody, but this bitter, nasty part of Dean felt like he might as well have been. And Dean — he hated himself for it, for being with somebody else when Cas needed him.

So Dean just muttere “Hospital” at Aaron, pulled on the first shirt and pair of pants he found, and went to the ER.

Where they told him he couldn’t go in, because he wasn’t family.

They told him — they _said —_ Dean _wasn’t Cas’s family._

So Dean waited outside. And waited. He waited the rest of the night, and all day, hassling the desk even though they told him Cas was probably gonna be okay, should wake up any time, and Dean was determined to be there for that, since he couldn’t — since he hadn’t been—

But he stepped out the next evening; went out to grab a cup of shitty coffee, and when he came back, Cas had woken up. And the nurses said he was fine — just like they’d told Dean he probably be — and then they offered to see if Cas wanted to see him.

And Dean had been there for so many hours, waiting, desperate to see his friend and know he was alright, but—

He was _scared._ He was, actually, fuckin’ _terrified,_ that they’d ask Cas, and Cas would say ‘no.’ Because the desk people were right; Dean was not Cas’s family. Maybe Cas didn’t even think of Dean as a friend, nowadays.

Anyway — Dean didn’t want to find out, so he just — left.

It’s not like that was that, though. Maybe he walked out of that hospital in body, but he was pretty sure a piece of his soul stayed behind, hungry for visual confirmation that Cas wasn’t going anywhere, at least not anywhere Dean couldn’t find him again. Even after he came home and showered and slept for a day, even after he gave Aaron some vague, inadequate explanation, even after he realized it was on him to call their friends and somehow find the words to let them know — the whole situation just _festered_ , barbed and angry and tearing through him in circles.

And it made things kind of weird. Made Dean kind of weird. He found, suddenly, that he couldn’t even bear to touch Aaron, even though things had been going really well before that call. And Aaron, god bless ‘im, was pretty understanding, would sit there and try to reassure him, “Look, Dean, he’s going to be okay. He made it. He’s still got his life to live. And so do you. You don’t owe it to him to deprive yourself of enjoying that life. I know you feel guilty, but — it won’t change anything.”

But that wasn’t it, not really. Sure, Dean was enough of a coward — he’d certainly proven _that —_ to let Aaron think that all his weird behavior was a self-denial thing, because Dean felt like he deserved to suffer since he’d let that happen to Cas. But Aaron was wrong, and Dean knew it. He knew it, because some sick, twisted, grossly unfair and callous part of Dean was _mad_ at Aaron. And yeah, he was furious with himself, because if he’d just stuck around to look after Cas, maybe none of it would have happened — but a part of him was angry at Aaron, too, felt like he had somehow prevented Dean from being there for Cas; felt like he was some kind of insidious distraction from what was really important, that kept him from noticing things were going so horribly wrong.

And that — that was just ten levels of fucked up.

So, yeah. One more thing for Dean to feel guilty over.

And Cas — Anna took a leave of absence from work to come look after him, get him back on even ground, and Cas didn’t call Dean, or ask for Dean, and Dean didn’t try to see him. Instead, he tried (but mostly failed) to ignore the sick feeling that followed him like a malevolent shadow, to feign normalcy and go about his business and just — let life go on.

So he took Aaron home for Thanksgiving, even though it felt shitty to do, because he couldn’t face Cas, and Cas probably didn’t even want to go, would probably feel awkward facing Dean’s family, and — and he thought, somehow, he probably needed to take a step back from it all and not let this thing with Cas ruin his relationship.

Of course, Aaron broke up with him by Christmas.

“Look, I know you’re trying,” he said, in that nice, pained way of his. “But, you know. We’re not really serious. And the entire reason we started dating is because we have fun, and you secretly like fruity umbrella drinks.”

Dean tried to crack a smile, but he couldn’t. He just — felt numb.

“Anyway,” Aaron went on. “It’s not that I wouldn’t be willing to wait for us to — go back to our normal, you know? But — I get that this thing with your friend has really messed with you. And I think me being here, being around you, is just . . . making it worse. You obviously feel guilty toward him, and guilty toward me, and . . . I just think you need time away from both of us to, I don’t know, find your equilibrium.”

And Dean didn’t argue — he couldn’t. He didn’t know if he’d ever find his equilibrium again, couldn’t even tell you when he’d lost it, because if he was being honest, he thought it was before Cas — did _that —_ before he thought he was in love with Cas, even — hell, it was probably sometime that first year of college, when he realized his childhood best friend had changed and things were never gonna be what they were.

And he was pissed. Because Cas was ruining — had _ruined —_ his relationship, but more than that, Cas was ruining _him._ He’d lie awake and just go over it in his mind — _I should have been there, I should have taken better care of him, this is all on me —_ and then he’d feel like shit for not being there after, for walking out of the ER like that and figuring somebody else would handle it.

And Dean couldn’t face him, couldn’t even imagine looking him in the eye after all that, was _furious_ with Cas for being so careless, was ashamed of himself for _letting_ him — but it was just so unfair. Yeah, maybe Dean had always looked out for Cas, had never _liked_ the drugs, but he’d also never _needed_ to look out for Cas. And how could Dean have stayed on as his roommate, after he — thought all that? He’d needed _time_ , damn it, he’d deserved that! He couldn’t spend his life babysitting Cas. He deserved to get some space, to be able to have a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, or whatever, he shouldn’t have had to . . . but — but—

Anyway; Anna came to see him after Christmas, because she’d finally needed to go back to work, and she, Cas’s actual family, wanted to make sure he was taken care of.

“I tried to get him to come with me,” she explained, “But — I guess this is his home. Even if he’s changed so much.”

“Yeah,” he’d agreed, trying not to think about Cas moving to _London,_ even though it was still a million times better than, you know, dying.

“Can you — go see him? I know you’re . . . frustrated, that he — I mean, I also was — am — surprised at him. It feels like he changes more and more every year, you know? But I’d still never expected . . . anyway. I just — I think he’d like to see you.”

“Oh. Uh, has he — has he asked?”

Anna had looked away, and Dean’s heart, strange beast that it is, sunk a little. But then she met his gaze square-on, and it was so much like Cas that the strange little beast in his breast seemed to have a strange little seizure.

“No. And that’s how I know he wants to.”

And surprisingly, Dean understood that. Cas had a million and one words for things he gave not a shit about, but when it came to how he felt — to what mattered — it was like he’d been given no voice to speak with.

“Okay.” And Dean had gone back with her, to Cas’s place, because it had to happen eventually, so why not now? Especially if there was a chance that Cas — maybe didn’t _need_ him, but wanted him there anyway.

Cas looked at him, standing in the doorway when Anna moved aside; they stared at each other for a long moment, and then Cas blinked and looked back at Anna and asked:

“Who is this?”

And Dean froze, felt his heart crashing to the bottom of his chest, because maybe the hospital _said_ he was fine, but the drugs obviously did something to him, somehow made him forget about Dean, and that — Dean couldn’t handle that. The thing was, even if Cas was still the same person, if he’d forgotten about Dean, if they no longer shared some kind of history, then Cas had no reason to _care;_ because Dean knew whatever bizarre fluke made Cas attach to him like a newly-hatched duckling when they were kids, whatever thing about Dean Cas managed to find so relentlessly fascinating for so long — it wasn’t gonna happen again. And that meant this was it for them.

But then Anna stepped forward and smacked him, and Cas smirked at Dean, and from one breath to the next Dean realized what a complete fucking moron he was, but felt too relieved to care, and just like that, things weren’t great, but they were good enough. Dean started coming over to watch TV, to make sure Cas ate, to take Cas out when he started feeling more like himself — and even though they never quite made it back to where they were before, they didn’t talk about it, and life went on. As much as it ever does, anyway.

But Dean doesn’t tell Pamela any of that.

Of course, after that, the good mood is gone, dead and salted and burned on a pyre of resentment and fury, and within a week, Dean breaks.

And he’ll maintain that he doesn’t have alcoholism — isn’t even sure that’s really what killed his Dad, because Dad had been checked out with grief since Mom died. And maybe the reasons why somebody drinks don’t change the fact that drinking killed them, but Dean doesn’t like how ‘liver failure’ ignores the real problem — but _sometimes,_ life is just downright _shitty,_ and the only thing for it is to get wasted.

Certainly, he’s no longer trying to be on his best behavior, because this is one thing he refuses to grovel over, and he’s pretty sure Cas is so pissed at him that nothing he does is going to actually matter.

So Dean does it. He goes out and gets well and truly plastered, and probably the only reason he doesn’t say to hell with the fucking bet and pick someone up is because he’s too angry to flirt, even after he’s lost count of his shots.

Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as being too angry to do something stupid.

Dean comes home, a little disappointed to find it’s not as late as he’d wanted, probably because he started early, and Cas is still up, still hanging out in the living room.

And Dean fully intends to just down a couple glasses of water and walk right on by, because he’s in no mood to get into anything tonight, but Cas, apparently still bitter over the drug lecture from the other week (which Dean swears he deserved) just can’t help himself. He stands, wanders over to where Dean’s shrugging out of his coat and subjects him to a disdainful onceover.

“You reek, Dean. Did you drink the _entire_ bar, or just most of it? Because it’s not like either would prove my point.”

And that’s it, for Dean. That’s just — _it._

Dean goes right up to him, and then keeps going, until Cas has no choice but to stumble back until he hits the wall, at which point Dean leans in and takes a deep sniff, the tip of his nose just touching Cas’s throat.

Cas shivers, and Dean pulls back with a smirk.

“You’ve been drinking, too, asshole,” he mutters. Cas angles away from him with a huff, looking annoyed, and suddenly, Dean’s hyper-aware of the position they’re in, Cas practically pinned to the wall while Dean stares down at him from about two inches away.

Worse still, Dean’s alcohol-saturated brain has some ideas about it.

 _He could get away if he wanted to,_ drunk-brain thinks, nasty son of a bitch that it is. Drunk-brain kind of likes Cas there, likes that Cas _isn’t_ trying to get away, no matter how irritated he seems. Drunk-brain is also pretty damn pissed at Cas, because everything wrong or weird or uncertain in Dean’s life comes back to Cas, and damn if he hasn’t spent the whole evening thinking about it. Dean wishes he could just get _over_ it, whatever _it_ is, and have some fucking peace of mind, for once.

And then drunk-brain decides it’s got nothing to lose (drunk-brain’s a fucking moron) and tells Dean to just _do it._

So he does. He presses in even closer, lets his mouth latch on to Cas’s neck, lets the strangled sound that escapes Cas’s lips curl hot in his ear, and he answers it with a nip of his teeth and a brief, hard suck.

Cas shudders, one hand coming up but still not touching Dean, and says his name; Dean moves up to catch the sound, to seal their mouths together in a hard kiss, relentless and demanding and Cas’s lips part and Dean just _goes for it_ and-

Cas shoves him away.

“ _Dean_ ,” he repeats, the word a harsh accusation. “What the fuck are you _doing_?”

Drunk-brain is suddenly silent, the bastard, leaving Dean as sober as he can be at this point and suddenly feeling twenty-two and humiliated and heartbroken all over again.

But that’s not all he feels; and maybe drunk-brain is still there, pulsing bad decisions and unfair feelings through his nerves, because now Dean is _furious._

“Come on,” he says, bitter and reckless. “It’s been _months,_ Cas. We’re allowed if it’s with each other, right? I know I’m getting real sick of my right hand, and you must be, too, so just — let’s do this.”

Cas scrambles away from the wall, forcing Dean to turn around to look at him.

“No,” is all he says, the word coming out with a touch of hysteria that Dean barely registers and chooses to ignore, because _why the hell not_?

He laughs, even though nothing about this is funny.

“Seriously? You — you’re not picky, man, and unless we’re not friends anymore, it’s not like you hate me, so — so _what_? What about me is so repulsive you’ll fuck just about anybody else who bothers to ask, but after months of celibacy you can’t stand the idea of touching _me_?”

Dean doesn’t get an answer to that, even though he genuinely wants one, has been quietly plagued with wondering for years now.

He doesn’t get any kind of answer at all, because Cas has apparently had enough of his bullshit and storms out.

And this time, he doesn’t come back.

Dean’s fake boyfriend breaks up with him via text, and Dean’s too hungover to even see it until hours after its arrival.

_You’re right, Dean,_ it says. _I can’t do a relationship. You win. Congratulations._

And Dean might be hungover, but he’s sober now; and he might be an idiot, but he knows enough things to hate this.

Because Cas is wrong. Cas, actually, was doing just fine, and the truth is, he _can_ do a relationship.

Just not with Dean.

It turns out that besides a relationship, Cas can do a lot of things; things which include waiting for Dean to leave for work before coming by with a rented U-haul, so that by the time Dean gets back, the apartment is half-empty and he doesn’t know if he’s ever going to see his best friend again.

“Charlie told me the bet ended,” Pamela tells him over the phone a week later, and half of Dean regrets picking it up.

The other half of him feels weirdly compelled to break down and just tell her everything, even all the stuff he held back from other sessions.

“Yeah. We, uh — it just wasn’t workin’ out.”

“I see.”

Dean waits for her to say whatever it is he can feel hovering at the end of that ‘I see,’ but she doesn’t.

“Well,” she says instead. “If it’s any consolation, I’m not going to bill you for the appointment you didn’t show up for last night.”

Dean smiles a little at that.

“You weren’t billing us to begin with.”

“Oh, but that was when you were showing up to entertain me,” she teases.

“Gee, thanks, doc. That’s real nice of you.” Although, in hindsight, as much baggage as the two of them had, it _was_ really nice of her to give them free therapy.

Not that it did them any good, in the end.

“Dean,” she says, suddenly serious. “I may eventually have to start charging you, but you know — you’re welcome to still come and see me, if you think it’ll be helpful. If I may, _I_ think it would benefit you — and I’m not saying that for the sake of my paycheck.”

“Uh.” Dean swallows, not sure what to make of that, because yeah, there is a part of him that wants to talk about it, is hoping that since it all crashed and burned anyway, maybe someone can finally help him understand _why._ “Yeah. Yeah, maybe. I’ll keep that in mind and — and let you know. Thanks, Pamela.”

“Of course. Take care of yourself, Dean.”

And once she’s off the phone, it sort of hits Dean, all over again, that this thing is really over.

He remembers standing in the kitchen, unpacking boxes, and thinking this bet might be the thing that did them in for good, and maybe he was right.

But maybe Dean would have irreversibly fucked it up eventually, anyway.

“I’m just — I dunno what’s wrong with me,” he complains that weekend, cheek smushed up against Charlie’s leg while she pets his hair sympathetically.

“There’s nothing wr-errr, well. That is. There’s something a little wrong with all of us, but there’s nothing terrible about you.”

“But there is. S’why Cas doesn’t wanna be my friend anymore,” he explains, morose, and she frowns at him.

“Yeah, Dean, you never did tell us what happened there. And Cas won’t talk about it. Isn’t talking much at all, to be honest.”

Dean lifts his head at that.

“He’s okay, right? Where’s he stayin’, anyway?”

“Meg’s got a spare room.”

Dean’s many beers and several shots of whiskey sour in his stomach at that, and maybe it shows on his face, because Charlie gives him an alarmed look and hurries to add:

“Her girlfriend doesn’t mind.”

And Dean almost asks if that girlfriend is picky about monogamy, but decides he can’t handle knowing if she’s not.

“God. God, I fucked up so bad.”

“Yeeeah?” she prompts slowly. “Wanna, you know, tell me about that?”

“Hell no.”

She sighs.

“Why not?”

“S’embarrassing. So, so embarrassing. I fucked up twice, actually, but — but I don’t think Cas noticed the first time.”

“Oh, I see now,” she says sarcastically, and flicks his forehead.

“Ow.”

“Seriously, Dean, I can’t _help_ if you don’t _tell_ me.”

Dean thinks about that for a minute, because he’s not kidding, not sure he can get the words out even if he _wants_ to, he’s that embarrassed; but even if he’s not ready to talk about, you know, the other night, he supposes he could tell her about — about that time in college.

“Listen, Char — and you can’t laugh at me, okay, ‘cause I know it was dumb, but I was just confused a little — and I know better now — but I used to think — and then I didn’t, ‘cause I wasn’t -”

“Dean.”

“I thought, back in college, maybe I was a lil’ bit in love with Cas.”

He wishes he could take the words back as soon as they’re out, because it just — it was just so _stupid._

Charlie’s quiet, as if she knows there’s more to this, so he goes on.

“S’why I moved out and left ‘im all alone. S’why — why he almost _died._ ‘Cause I thought I had all these . . .” he waves a hand. “Dumb feelings.”

And he’s starting to think — maybe he’s still got some kind of feelings, even if he still doesn’t understand them, and they’re what fucked everything up again.

He doesn’t tell Charlie, though. ‘Cause it’s a secret. And he’s ashamed.

“Uh,” Charlie starts, and Dean makes a face, because damn it, she’s probably trying not to laugh at him. Or worse, maybe now she’s mad at him, ‘cause Cas is her friend too and they almost lost him for good and it was all Dean’s fault. “I — kind of knew that?”

What?

“What?”

Charlie shrugs.

“I knew that. That you fee-thought you felt that way.”

“Okay.” He blinks, totally thrown, and then remembers something very important. “What the _fuck,_ Charlie, why the hell did you suggest this, then?”

With a wince, Charlie brings a knee up to her chest, obviously feeling a little guilty.

“I don’t know! I guess — I was kind of hoping it might — turn real? Maybe?”

“ _How_ would it do that? What, didja think Cas would just — suddenly decide to be in love with me, when you knew full well he barely even _likes_ me most days?”

“Well, maybe! He used to! I just — I can’t tell anymore.”

Dean’s still stumbling over ‘he used to.’

“What? What do you . . . what do you mean, he used to? Used to what?”

She frowns.

“Used to, you know, be in love with you. Like, _crazy_ in love with you.”

“When?” he demands, because — because _what_?

“Back in high school. Probably before that, too, but you know, I was a little too busy with comic books and D&D to care about that kind of thing.”

Dean thinks back, a veritable deluge of memory crushing his pathetic, inebriated mind.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

At that, Charlie gives him a sharp look.

“Uh, because you were nowhere even close to being out yet. In fact, I don’t think you knew you were in the closet. You probably told yourself that half-goat man by the lamp post just had a medical condition.”

“I — so? That doesn’t — someone still should’ve . . .”

“Dude, you weren’t ready. And however _you_ might have felt, I had Cas to think of, too. You would have — I don’t know, freaked out and scarred him for life if I’d told you.” She pauses. “Although you ended up doing that anyway.”

Dean wants to say he doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but then an image of Cas’s face, after Dean told him Meg was waiting upstairs, comes to mind.

“Okay.” He swallows. “Okay, but — what about later?”

Charlie just sighs and tips her head back, squeezing her eyes shut.

“Honestly? By the time I felt confident you A) felt the same way and B) could be relied on not to be a dick about it, I wasn’t sure _Cas_ still did. And I didn’t wanna get your hopes up, because either he didn’t, or he was really fucking good at hiding it.”

Dean deflates.

“He didn’t,” he mutters, and she lifts her head.

“How can you be sure?”

“’Cause. I — I tried.”

“Tried . . .?” Although she looks like she has a pretty good idea.

“Last semester, before Christmas, I — I tried to kiss him, okay? But he — yeah. So I moved out.”

“Oh. And you’re sure-”

“Yes, Charlie, I’m sure.” To whatever it was she was about to ask.

“Okay. Okay, fine. But — what about now? You guys-” she bites her lip. “You guys were doing really well, for a while there. What happened?”

And Dean should have known he’d end up telling her everything, was probably sub-consciously planning on it from the moment he texted her asking to hang out.

“I tried again,” he mumbles. “Or — didn’t try. I did it. I — I kissed him.”

“Oh. Ohhhh. And—”

“And he was so — so put off, and horrified by it, he couldn’t even stick it out for six more weeks. Okay? So yeah. That’s — that’s where we’re at.”

“Oh,” she says, voice small. “I see.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m — I’m sorry. That I thought this up.”

“It’s okay,” he sighs. “We’re the idiots that went through with it.”

Charlie, to his perverse gratification, has nothing to say to that, and they sit quietly for a few minutes, during which Dean realizes he at some point started to sober up.

“Can I have some more booze?” he asks pitifully, and Charlie scrambles off the sofa, subtly wiping her eyes with a much less-subtle sniff.

“Yeah. Yeah, of course, Dean.”

And when she comes back, she looks so sad that even without the full tumbler of her nice whiskey, Dean would have forgiven her.

Dean is pathetically relieved to see Cas again, and it’s just because he was afraid he’d lost his best friend for good, not because he’s been having trouble sleeping and his apartment’s too empty and even alcohol does nothing to dull the gnawing ache behind his ribs that seems to be a constant.

The whole gang always meets up at the bar at least once a month, but to be honest, Dean wasn’t sure Cas would show, even though Christmas is next week and most of them won’t get to see each other until New Years. The fact that he does fills Dean with a shaky, tentative kind of hope; maybe someday, after enough outings with their friends as buffers, and after enough time and distance from this stupid bet, they might be their own fucked-up brand of okay again.

And things go alright, even though they never directly address each other, straight up until Victor asks about the bet.

“So — you guys aren’t still doing that thing, right?”

And it’s not Vic’s fault that Dean hasn’t talked to anybody except Charlie about it, and apparently Cas hasn’t had a lot to say, either, but he can’t help the stab of vicious hate that cuts through him when he sees Cas’s shoulders tense on the other side of the table.

“No,” Cas answers shortly, and offers a small, brittle smile. “Dean earned an early victory.”

Which isn’t how it happened, not at all — because molesting someone else in their own house and having a self-absorbed tantrum about it when asked to stop is really not a fair win — but something about Cas’s smile, the mocking lilt to his tone, gets right under Dean’s skin and digs in, because this is _bullshit._ Yeah, okay, Dean fucked up with that kiss; but they’d been going back and forth for months, taking turns digging at each other’s scars, and they’d still showed up for work the next day.

That kiss, for Cas, should have been like any other fight; Cas should have just told him to fuck off and sober up, and they should have moved past it, like they always do. Instead, Cas was the one who decided to give up — on the bet, and on their friendship, it felt like — and walk out.

So Dean can’t stop himself, because picking fights with each other is second nature to them now.

“It’s funny,” he says, “’Cause you’re the one who accused _me_ of finding excuses to walk out.”

And Dean’s a little surprised to find that yeah, he _is_ pissed about this, has been since Cas shut the door behind him for the last time.

“You do,” Cas insists, bristling, obviously not getting it. “You always have.”

“Sure, like when?” Because as far as Dean can remember, every single time someone’s stormed out of the room the last several months, that someone has been _Cas._

“Like when you left me,” Cas snaps, and that stops Dean short.

“Left you when?” he demands, even though he knows, but some part of him is in shock that Cas would choose _now_ , after years of silently agreeing to not talk about it, to bring it up. Now, when they’re surrounded by friends in a public place. Now, when they’re already cut and bleeding on the rocks and this just might kill them for good.

“In college. You just — left.”

And Dean’s heart is trying to vault right out of his chest, and his soul is generating some pitiful wail of anguish, because he _knows_ he shouldn’t have, _knows_ he was wrong, but _it’s not that simple;_ it’s not that simple because Cas _hurt him, too._

“Wow, Cas,” he manages. “I didn’t think you noticed.”

And honestly, he didn’t. Even after Cas OD’d, even though Dean blamed himself, regretted not being there — he still didn’t think his leaving had anything to _do_ with it. Whether Dean wished he’d been there to rain on his parade enough to avoid a fucking _overdose_ or not, that didn’t mean Cas wasn’t livin’ it up like his life depended on it.

And if Cas thinks that wasn’t like a cold bucket of water over Dean’s head every day that passed where Cas made it clear he didn’t care that Dean was gone, then he’s maybe just as stupid as Dean.

“I did nothing _but_ notice, Dean!” he snaps, and Dean pulls back, startled. “I noticed and noticed and _noticed,_ until it drove me so crazy I couldn’t stand being sober enough to _keep_ noticing, and look where the hell _that_ got me!”

Dean’s jaw drops.

“What the _fuck,_ Cas? Are you — are you trying to say it was _my_ fault you almost died?” It was. Every terrible voice that whispers at him in the dark when he’s by himself says it was, but hearing it from Cas — “Because I did not do that. You did that to yourself.”

“I did,” Cas agrees, nodding shortly. “I did. But that doesn’t change the fact that you _left_ me, for no reason I’ve ever been able to understand, and it — it sure as hell didn’t help.”

And then Cas does what Cas does best, what he’s turned into a veritable fucking art form. He shoves frantically at the other people in the booth until they’ve scrambled out of the way, and then he walks out.

Dean’s still in some kind of angry, miserable shock five minutes later when Charlie breaks the silence.

“Uh, Dean,” she says carefully. “Remember that — that thing we talked about? The other night? When you were drunk?”

“Yes, and we’re not talking about it ag—”

“Shut up, Dean. I need you to answer a question.”

He glares at her, but she glares back.

“You told me you — uh — _tried._ And Cas left. What _exactly_ happened?”

Dean frowns, and gestures for Jo to let them out of the booth so they can talk in private.

Safely away from prying ears, Dean reluctantly walks her through the final clusterfuck of their fake relationship. To his surprise, she smacks him across the back of the head before he’s even got the last word out.

“Oh, my _god,_ Dean, you — you _dummy!_ Go!”

“The _hell,_ Charlie? Go where?”

“ _Go after him!_ ” She slaps a palm across her face. “Ugh, I can’t believe you. I can’t believe _I_ believed you!”

“Charlie, what the hell are you telling me to do here?”

“I’m telling you, for once in your life, to _talk_ to him, okay?”

“And say what?”

She gives him a hard stare, followed by a shove.

“You’ll figure it out. You _better._ ”

Cas is sitting on the curb outside the bar, staring at the trees on the other side of the road, when Dean plops down next to him.

“Hey,” he mutters, half-expecting Cas to push him in front of the approaching truck.

Cas doesn’t say anything for a while, doesn’t even look at him; if Dean didn’t know any better, he’d think he’d turned invisible somewhere between leaving Charlie and sitting down here.

“Hello, Dean,” he finally says, shoulders drooping, and in spite of the dire gloom that currently permeates the air, a little spark of happiness lights up his brain at the familiar words.

He waits a second, trying to gauge Cas’s mood, but at the very least, he doesn’t seem interested in fighting anymore.

“So, um. Things aren’t — great with us, right now.”

Cas snorts.

“Things haven’t been great with us in years, Dean. If they even ever have been.”

Dean frowns at that.

“Yeah, they were. Didn’t you think so?”

Cas shifts a little, angling himself to finally look at Dean.

“When?”

“You know. Before, um. Before college. When we were kids. Things were pretty good. Come on, you agreed, in therapy, that — it wasn’t always like this.”

Cas sighs.

“If I recall, you were the one who said they were.”

“I lied. Seriously, dude, you know that kind of thing — talking about feelings, and — and stuff, I, uh, I have a hard time. But — I’m being honest, now. Things were alright, back in the day.”

“But not great,” Cas says quietly, and Dean falls silent, stumped, because he disagrees.

But then he remembers what Charlie told him, about how Cas felt in high school and possibly even before, and he can kind of see how they felt less great to him. Dean knows now, what it feels like, to know the person you want just — doesn’t want you back.

A yellow beetle drives by, and Cas pulls a face. He’s always hated those.

“Really, man? We’re havin’ a heart to heart and you’re thinkin’ about how ugly that car is?”

“I didn’t say anything,” he retorts, defensive, and Dean chuckles.

“Didn’t have to.”

And the silence this time is a little more amiable, a little more _comfortable._

It doesn’t last.

“The first time I had sex felt amazing,” Cas says suddenly, the biggest non sequitur ever, and despite Dean’s best efforts to stay cool, he can feel his brows scaling his forehead.

“Okay. Uh. That’s — that’s good, but, um, I’m not sure how it’s—”

“I didn’t lie about that,” he continues, scrunching his toe in his shoe. Dean watches the little bump in the toebox, dumbfounded. “You see — it was a relief, to me, that I liked it so much, because I thought it meant that I had grown out of it.”

“Grown out of what?”

“You. How I felt about you.”

“How you — what — you — oh.” And Dean’s proud of himself for that minimally bumbling little speech, because somehow, even though he’d already had time to adjust to the idea after hearing it from Charlie, hearing it from Cas is—

“Yes. ‘Oh.’” Cas seems calm enough, like this admission doesn’t really cost him much, but Dean sees a slight tremor in his hand before it quickly disappears into his pocket. “I hadn’t — when you told me, at that party, to go sleep with Meg, I was -” He cuts off. “I don’t think I can explain how that felt. The idea made me sick.”

Dean swallows.

“I’m sorry.”

Cas just shrugs.

“It took me a while, but after a year or so, I was determined to — to move on. I hung out with Meg, and other people. I — stopped living in your pocket. I tried a lot of new things, some I liked, some I didn’t, and I guess — I decided sex should be one of them, because — when you pushed me at her like that, I had to come to terms with the fact that I’d die alone if I waited around for you.”

“I — Cas, you should’ve said something, I didn’t—” he tries, but Cas shakes his head.

“You wouldn’t have wanted to hear it, Dean. It would have made you — uncomfortable, and when you get uncomfortable, you avoid, and while I may have been . . . _upset,_ that my feelings were not reciprocated, I didn’t want to lose you.”

“I’m sorry,” Dean says again, because he doesn’t know what else to say, doesn’t think he can convey to Cas just how sorry he is, just how _badly_ he wishes he’d been an out and proud bisexual with enough fluency in his own feelings he could have just realized he probably _did_ like Cas back, even then, and then maybe — maybe they’d be somewhere different, now. Somewhere better.

Of course, maybe they would have got to college and Cas would have gotten tired of him and broken his heart, anyway.

Cas shrugs, like it’s all meaningless now, although it can’t be, if he feels the need to talk about it.

“You didn’t know. I mean, I don’t know how you missed it, because I was embarrassingly _obvious,_ but such is your nature.”

“Hey-”

“Anyway, the sex — the sex part was very nice. And yes, I was relieved to see the end of my — my crush. But it was disappointing, too.”

“How so?”

“I wasn’t expecting to like it. It was something I decided to make myself do, but I was sure I wouldn’t. I had always thought — feelings mattered, when it came to sex. At least, that they did for me. I thought I couldn’t enjoy it with someone el-someone I didn’t love. I thought that was what would make it special.” He sighs. “But no. I found I could enjoy it with a _number_ of people I didn’t love. Several of them at once, even. Feelings just . . . didn’t count for anything.”

“Well — I wouldn’t — I wouldn’t say that,” Dean interjects awkwardly.

“Hm?”

“I — I obviously am a big fan of the anonymous bar sex myself, but, uh. That doesn’t mean — when it _is_ someone you love, that it’s not . . . nice. More nice, sometimes. Whatever.”

Cas nods.

“Yeah. I figured that out.”

And Dean’s a little crushed, because okay, it should have occurred to him that if Cas really was in love with him in high school, it then followed that Dean was misunderstanding this whole aromantic thing, and he must have liked other people, besides Dean.

It didn’t, though, not until now, and even though he’s got no right, Dean hates it.

Cas, of course, is oblivious to his internal caveman anguish, and Dean knows he should let it go, but it’s like he can’t stop the words from pouring out.

“Yeah? Uh, when — when was that?” _Who was that?_

“Oh. When you tried to kiss me at that party.”

Dean chokes on air.

“Uh,” he manages. “Um, what — what party?”

He feels a little ill, because if he’s understanding this right, Cas knew _exactly_ what Dean had been trying to do on that sofa, and _why._

And it’s probably why he said no.

Cas tilts his head, squinting at Dean.

“You really don't remember?”

“Um. I — I don’t think I do?”

Cas looks at him, frowning, but does not cease his search of Dean’s face.

“Well, you were drunk. I sat next to you on the sofa, and you — leaned forward, I guess, and I was confused, but you kept leaning, and I leaned back because if I didn’t we would have kissed, and then I realized that’s what you were trying to do, and I fell over.”

“Uh.” Dean isn’t sure whether saying more or less will work better for him. Cas narrows his eyes.

“Come on, Dean. You must remember. It was one of the parties I threw before Winter break.”

“Which one?” he hedges.

“The one-” Cas thinks about it, and suddenly his face stills. Dean can hear his breath catch. “The one right before you moved out.”

Aw, shit. Dean should have just said he remembered it.

“Oh. That one. Yeah, I guess that — sounds familiar. Gosh, I was really drunk,” he tries, though he knows it’s no good.

Cas turns to look at him, blue eyes wide and sad.

“Is that why-”

“No, no, come on, we talked about this with Pam, remember?” Dean insists, a little frantic.

It’s apparent Cas doesn’t believe him.

“I would have pretended it hadn’t happened. I knew you didn’t mean anything by it. You didn’t have to leave me over something like that,” he says, voice trembling.

Dean puts a hand to his face.

“No, that wasn’t-”

“It — it didn’t even happen, Dean. I stopped you. There wasn’t even anything to discuss, it wasn’t even a drunken mistake because it didn’t get that far — how could you walk out on me over — over _that_ ? I wouldn’t have said a word, I — _I stopped you,_ Dean. Did you not trust me?”

“No, it wasn’t—“ he starts, but Cas is caught in a downward spiral, agitation driving him to his feet, and there’s no room for Dean’s feeble denials.

“You were _drunk,_ and it _didn’t even happen!_ Dean, do you — do you even _understand_ what it did to me when you left? Do you get how _hard_ that was for me, to realize that all my other friends were more your friends than mine, that the people I had over and partied with could have been anyone, for all they mattered, that — that _you were all I had?_ Except — except you were _gone.”_

“Cas—” Dean stands, holding up a placating hand, but Cas isn’t having it.

“And all of that, that was after you tried to kiss me, and I realized that I—” Cas breaks off, clearly getting hysterical, hand running through his hair like it has a mind of it’s own. “You know, I — it felt like you ruined my _life_ , Dean.”

“What?” he manages, hurt and bewildered, still struggling to keep up, to understand what even is happening here. “How did I-”

“You ruined my life, because _everything_ I grew up wanting from life, I wanted with _you._ But you didn’t feel the same, so instead I ended up with a million different cheap substitutes because I am so broken I can’t seem to want anyone else. And the only thing that made it bearable was that you were at least _there —_ until you weren’t.”

“But — I thought — you said, when you slept with Meg, you realized you were — you were over it-”

“ _I thought I was!_ ” he practically yells, and then draws in on himself, ashamed. “I really — I thought I was. But it was all just — I was naive, I had bought into all the — the hallmark _bullshit_ about what love was. I was sad because I’d never have you, and then I thought once I accepted that, once I could be with other people, it meant I must have moved on. And then you — you _left,_ like that, and I realized I _did_ have you, Dean, in all the ways that actually counted, that you don’t need to hold hands and mutually declare your love or even fuck somebody to be with them and that regardless of — of whatever commercial romantic illusions I bought into as a teenager, we were together. We were _always_ together. And then you were gone and we weren’t and it _fucked me up._ ”

And with that, Dean finally gets it, or at least he’s pretty sure he does, and he feels like a fool for not understanding then, but the idea that Cas — that as uniquely incredible as Cas is, and as fucked up and shitty as Dean is, Cas could want him in the first place is — it’s difficult to imagine. So, certainly, the idea that after that long, and after all the shit Dean pulled, Cas had _still_ wanted him — it just — _how?_ How was that even possible? How is he supposed to _believe_ it?

“If that — if that’s true, if you really — then why didn’t you let me kiss you?” he asks, not caring how broken and pathetic the question sounds, because the entire gigantic wreck that is their relationship is looking pretty fuckin’ broken and pathetic right now, so he might as well double down.

Cas shoots him a disbelieving look.

“Why didn’t I — Dean, how can you even _ask_ that? Do you — do you even understand why we’re having this conversation? Why I’m telling you _any_ of this?”

Actually -

“No! I don’t! I don’t understand anything right now, okay, Cas? So _explain it to me!_ ”

Cas makes a raw, animal noise of frustration.

“ _Dean._ I’m — I — this is me asking you to understand _why_ I can’t keep — _doing this_!”

“Doing _what?_ What _are_ we doing here, man? Because I have _no idea._ ”

Cas puts his face in his hands, and Dean thinks maybe they’ve reached a standstill, and all these revelations will just leave him more confused and messed up than he started out, but then Cas lifts his head and meets Dean’s eyes.

“Dean, I couldn’t let you kiss me.”

“Why _not?”_ he demands, because honestly, this has been _killing_ him, for _years. “_ Is it like — even though you had — feelings, you just — weren’t attracted to me? Is that it?”

“Jesus Christ, Dean, almost anybody who’s attracted to anything in the primate family is attracted to you.”

“What?”

“No, really, when we went to the zoo in the eleventh grade, there was a gorilla-”

“I don’t give a fuck about the gorilla, Cas! _Tell me why you didn’t want me_!”

“That’s what I’m trying to say, you ass! I _did_ want you, of course I wanted you! Even when I thought I’d gotten over you, I still had _eyes._ I never stopped thinking you were beautiful. But the idea that you — that we’d kiss, or even — I _couldn’t._ It hit me like a ton of bricks, that I _wasn’t_ over you, not even a little, and for us to do — _whatever_ it was you were drunk enough to want from me, but it not _mean_ anything to you? Or — or never happen again? Or even freak you out and make you _avoid_ me?” He lets out a bitter laugh. “It was bad enough to realize I still had feelings for you. I certainly didn’t want to find out that sex with anyone else wasn’t as good. Then what would I do with my time?”

Dean stares, and Cas just rambles right on.

“Of course, you did end up avoiding me, and then I had to cope with knowing my feelings for you had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with _you,_ being you and being _there._ ”

“Fuck. Cas,” he whispers, mild panic lighting up his bloodstream. Somehow, amid this entire conversation, he’d failed to convey to Cas something very important, something he stupidly assumed Cas must have already figured out.

“I know. It’s fucking pathetic. I should have let you do whatever you wanted. At least you might have stayed.”

“Jesus, Cas, you — I moved out because I was _humiliated,_ and — and -” _heartbroken._ “Hurt.”

Cas glares at him, though there’s no heat behind it. Cas is probably just as exhausted as Dean, by now.

“Though I stand by my previous statement regarding your attractiveness, I can’t believe I’m the only person to ever turn you down. I don’t see how it was such a blow to your ego you had to _move out._ ”

The sadness is creeping back into his gaze, and Dean can’t stop himself from reaching out, grabbing Cas’s wrist.

“Dude, stop it — just — just _listen,_ okay? You — I tried to kiss you, and you shot me down.”

“Dean, I told you why-”

“Yeah, and I’m telling _you_ it would have been _fine!_ ”

Cas blinks down at the hand on his wrist, his brow furrowed.

“In what way would it have been _fine,_ Dean? For you, maybe, but even if you’d stayed, I would have been right back where I was in high school-”

“It would have been _fine,_ because _I_ was in love with you, too, dumbass! _That’s why I left!_ ”

Cas just stares, shoulders tense and frozen.

“What?” he whispers.

“I left because you — you told me you weren’t ever gonna date someone, because you didn’t have feelings for people, and it — fuck, it broke my heart, but I knew you at least liked fucking people, so I thought I could at least have that, sometimes, or even just the once, but you didn’t even want _that_ from me, and — and — I couldn’t just keep living with you after that, not when you probably _knew—_ ”

“I didn’t! God _damn_ it, Dean, I didn’t, I didn’t know anything! All I knew is that you were my best friend and suddenly you wanted _nothing_ to do with me.”

“I’m sorry, okay? But from where I was sitting, you made it clear you didn’t want me, and I couldn’t deal with that.”

“You should have told me,” Cas insists, miserable. “Dean, that isn’t fair, you know I don’t — I don’t get these things. I _can’t_ tell, I have to be told, or else I don’t know. Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

“Because _you_ know I’m not good with — with talking! I couldn’t tell you, not if I didn’t think you felt the same way.”

“ _I was fucking obvious!_ I thought the only reason you _couldn’t_ see it was because that was the _last_ way you were thinking of me!”

“Jesus Christ,” Dean mutters, and he’s _tired;_ God, is he tired.

He sits back down on the curb, facing away from Cas’s pinched, teary expression, and yeah, maybe he’s hated the years of indifference being the only thing he ever seems to see on Cas’s face, but fuck if it didn’t still feel better than this.

“Okay. Okay. Yeah, so — so we’re both dumbasses. And we nearly destroyed our friendship over nothing. Fuckin’ A.”

A minute passes, and then Cas is sitting next to him, wiping at his eyes with his sleeve, and if Dean finds himself breathing in with a loud sniff, it’s just because there’s pollen or some shit blowing around when the cars go by.

And okay, that’s great, sharing time was awesome — _not —_ but where the fuck does that leave them now?

He asks Cas as much.

“So — so what now?”

Cas shrugs, shakes his head.

“I don’t know.”

Dean sighs.

“Well — are we good, now?”

With a puzzled look, Cas turns to face him.

“I — no?”

“What? ‘No’? Why ‘no?’ Didn’t we — lay it all out there? I mean, yeah, okay, we figured out we had a pretty messed up situation going, but that was years ago. Can’t we just — let it go, now?”

Cas is starting to look upset again, and while Dean has always assumed he’d like storm powers or super-strength, or hell, even x-ray vision, if he had a superpower, he now realizes that what he really wants is the ability to know when and how he’s fucked up.

“Dean, do you remember _why_ we’re fighting in the first place?”

“Yeah, because you got mad and ran out on me just because I was drunk and did something dumb.”

“Did something — Dean, you _moron._ ”

“Gettin’ real tired of people callin’ me stupid,” he mutters, though he supposes he brought it up.

“Well, get used to it,” Cas snaps.

“What the hell, man?” Dean asks, taken aback. “I’m getting whiplash, here.”

This just earns him yet another supremely frustrated look.

But then it turns tired, and yeah, _whiplash._

“You remember, a little over a month ago, when Pamela asked — why I was still here?”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re a competitive son-of-a-bitch.”

“Perhaps, but that wasn’t why.”

“Okay, then, why?”

“Because it was like old times.”

Dean kind of gets that; maybe more than kind of gets that, because he was feeling it, too.

“I honestly didn’t care, by then, whether I won or not. I was just — happy. We were living together again — I didn’t think we ever would — and we were getting along, for the most part, and most days I didn’t even wonder if you actually hated me and just didn’t want to admit it.”

Dean frowns.

“You thought that? Before?”

“Yes? Sometimes more seriously than others, but — I did.”

“I don’t. I never hated you, even when I was mad at you.” He clears his throat. “Even when I thought you kind of hated me.”

“I believe you,” Cas says, eyes serious.

“Okay. Good. So — what’s the problem? You didn’t like that you liked living with me?”

“Actually — sort of?” Cas swallows, looks down. “I more than _liked_ living with you. I felt at home for the first time in years. And no matter what I did, at the end of six months, it would be over.”

Oh.

“You shoulda said something. It’s not like we were seein’ anybody, we could have stayed roommates. Hell, we still can. Just — bring all your stuff back, and you can have the other room, or — or I can take it, if you want the master, and we can unpack everything for good.”

The offer just gets him a pained look.

“I can’t do that, Dean.”

“Why not? And for that matter, why’d you leave, if you liked living together so much?” And for the first time, because Dean’s been way too wrapped up in himself and his own particular brand of woes, it occurs to him that Cas probably didn’t leave because of the _kiss._ He left because that kiss — that whole confrontation, with Dean coming home wasted like that — was just another stage in a much longer argument. “Listen, I know I rode you way too hard over the — the -” Dean swallows. “The thing, and yeah, maybe it’s taken me a while to cool down — but I’m sorry. You don’t have to worry that I’ll always be nagging you over it, and I know it — it wasn’t cool to treat you like that. So — yeah. Sorry.”

Cas is already shaking his head before Dean’s even done.

“No, Dean, it wasn’t about that. Or it was, because having you be angry at me is — is _nervewracking,_ because I’m just waiting for you tell me you’re done with me, for good, but — that’s why. As much as I like living with you, would live with you forever if I could, I’m — God, I’m tired of trying to hold onto something that isn’t even mine.”

That. That’s — Dean doesn’t — he can’t—

“Uh. Um. What — what do you mean? Something that’s not — that’s not yours? How do you . . .”

Cas gives him a resigned look, and Dean would give anything to know what he thinks he’s resigned _to_.

“You, Dean. You’re not mine. But — I’m yours. I don’t think I ever won’t be. And it’s a shitty way to live.”

If finding out Cas had liked him that whole time back in high school made Dean feel like someone had turned him upside down and given him a hard shake, hearing this, now, makes him feel like there are oceans above him, pressing down on the silent space between his ears.

He’s speechless.

“You know, I hate that you know me so well,” Cas continues solemnly. “I think to myself, sometimes, what if I go my whole life, and nobody ever knows me like you do? What if I die someday, miles and — and _years_ away from you, but you’re still the person who knows me best?”

Dean thinks he might cry.

And then Cas is giving him a strange look, and oh _shit_ , he is.

“Dean?”

“You — you’re wrong,” he manages. “Because I — I _am,_ Cas. Think I always have been.”

“You’re . . . what, Dean?”

Dean shuts his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose, and tries again.

“Look, I don’t — I don’t want you to ever — not be mine. Because I’m always gonna be yours.”

When he opens his eyes again, Cas is staring at him.

He stares, and Dean waits, and he stares some more.

And Dean waits some more, because you know what, what’s a little longer, when he’s already waited years?

And _then_ — for the second time that day — Cas gets up and walks away.

“Cas?” he calls, unable to stop himself, as he scrambles to his feet, because _C_ _hrist,_ can he not catch a fuckin’ break? “Cas, where are you going?”

Cas stops, and Dean can see his shoulders draw up with the breath he takes in, and then he pivots and marches back over to Dean, coming to a stop inches away.

For a second, Dean thinks he’s going to kiss him.

He doesn’t, though. He leans forward, lips so close to Dean’s ear they brush his skin lightly as he whispers.

And as he listens, Dean’s pulse starts racing for a totally different reason.

Cas pulls back, voice returning to a normal pitch.

“. . . and while I am perfectly willing to have you do that in the men’s bathroom of the bar, if that’s my only choice, I would _much_ rather it happen in the privacy and comfort of the apartment.”

“Not the bedroom?” Dean asks, voice strained, because some insane part of him, even when it’s about to get exactly what it wants, just _has_ to talk back.

Cas narrows his eyes.

“Alright. If you think you can make it that far.”

Dean doesn’t make it that far (not that he tries). Cas reassures him that a couch is just as good as a bed if you do it right.

And Dean’s pretty sure they _do_ do it right — better than right — and he certainly doesn’t regret it.

But he does think, afterward, that Cas is a big fuckin’ liar.

\- end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *** SPOILERS ***
> 
> past drug overdose: Dean finds one of Cas's old kits, and a terrible fight ensues. Pamela asks, which leads to Dean explaining about Cas's accidental overdose, and reflecting on his experience receiving the call from the hospital in the middle of the night.
> 
> past Dean/Aaron: at the time of Cas's overdose, Dean was seeing Aaron. The flashback notes that he was in bed with Aaron when he got the call, and Dean is dismayed to realize he may have been being intimate with someone while Cas was somewhere dying. He struggles with Aaron, after that, unfairly blaming him, in some ways, and Aaron eventually breaks up with him.


End file.
